AH, YOUTH: Half of all College Students Believe their Student Loans Will be “Forgiven”

FAIRE LA FRANCE GRAND ENCORE: Yes, Le Pen could win in France.

Even some of her rivals concede a victory for the far-right firebrand is possible.

“I think Madame Le Pen could be elected,” former conservative prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said this month.

Another former premier, the Socialist Manuel Valls, has also warned of the “danger” of assuming that Le Pen cannot win.

Polls show that support for the 48-year-old anti-immigrant and anti-EU candidate has been consistent for four years now.

Since 2013, surveys have shown she will progress through the first round to reach the runoff stage in France’s two-stage presidential election.

For all the fuss, French voters seem poised to do nothing out of the ordinary: Trade one brand of collectivist for another one.

“YOU LIE!” House Democrats plan to troll Trump at big speech.

It’s different when they do it.

CHANGE: Colorado’s Governor, Who Opposed Pot Legalization in 2012, Is Ready to Defend It.

The president, whose press secretary last week predicted “greater enforcement” of the federal ban on marijuana in the eight states that have legalized the drug for recreational use, may be interested in what Hickenlooper had to say in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press yesterday:

Todd: If this were put on a ballot today, I know you opposed it before, but if it were put on a ballot today, would you now support it?

Hickenlooper: Well, I’m getting close. I mean, I don’t think I’m quite there yet, but we have made a lot of progress. We didn’t see a spike in teenage use. If anything, it’s come down in the last year. And we’re getting anecdotal reports of less drug dealers. I mean, if you get rid of that black market, you’ve got tax revenues to deal with, the addictions, and some of the unintended consequences of legalized marijuana, maybe this system is better than what was admittedly a pretty bad system to begin with.

Hickenlooper’s views on legalization have been evolving since 2014 based on what has actually happened in Colorado, which suggests the “big problems” that Trump perceived in 2015 may have been exaggerated by the prohibitionists who were feeding him information. Even if legalization were a disaster in Colorado, of course, that would not mean the federal government should try to stop it. The federalist approach Trump has said he favors allows a process of trial and error from which other states can learn.

Indeed.

Read the whole thing.

DAVID GOLDMAN: A deplorable vote for Angela Merkel.

Deplorably, I would vote for Angela Merkel, and urge my American friends to support the present Christian Democratic-Social Democratic coalition rather than the alternative: a “Red-Red-Green” coalition (Social Democrats plus the successor to the old East German Communist Party plus the Green Party. If Merkel loses Germany will be ruled by Russian stooges. That’s the opposite of what some of Donald Trump’s closest supporters think. Most of them agree with British gadfly Nigel Farage, who told Germany’s national radio yesterday:

Well, I wouldn’t vote for Angela Merkel, that’s the first piece of advice I’d give. I mean, look at the catastrophic errors she made: opening up the doors to so-called refugees, it turned out that 70 percent of them were young males, economic migrants. And because she’s given up border controls, the most wanted man in Europe if not the world is able to catch a train to France, and then to Italy, without anyone checking who he is.

Farage is right, but he’s wrong. Many of my friends are making the same mistake that the neo-conservatives did, that is, attempting to export American ideas to place where they don’t belong. When they look at any part of the world, Americans ask: Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? In most places, there aren’t good guys and bad guys. There are just bad guys and worse guys. Merkel’s migration policy is bad, but it is neither stupidly bad, nor wickedly bad. Rather, it is tragically bad. Germany has a gap in its soul. In between the citizen-of-the-world liberalism that characterizes its elite and the atavistic nationalism that attracts a small fringe, there is nothing there at all.

This is a lengthy piece, but a fascinating one. It would be well worth your time to read the whole thing, even if you don’t reach the same conclusions.

WELL, GOOD: Environmental Chief Vows Swift Rollback of Obama-Era Rules.

Those policy reversals, set to start next week, will empower the Environmental Protection Agency to focus on its core mission of protecting the air and water, Pruitt said Saturday in a speech and question-and-answer session on the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

“The previous administration was so focused on climate change and so focused on CO2, some of those other priorities were left behind,” Pruitt said in his first detailed remarks since being sworn in to lead the EPA on Feb. 17. “I really believe that at the end of eight years, we’re going to have better air quality, we’re going to have better water quality because it’s going to be vested in a partnership” with states.

The Animas River could not be reached for comment.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Jimmy Kimmel tweets at President Donald Trump during Oscars.

DOUBLING DOWN ON STUPID: With Obamacare in jeopardy, California considers going it alone with ‘single-payer’ system.

“Why wouldn’t we take this as an opportunity to create what we want in California?” Dr. Mitch Katz, head of L.A. County’s health department, said at a conference in December. He mentioned a single-payer system as a possible solution.

Other suggestions for how California can capitalize on the threat to Obamacare include creating a public option, a state-run health plan to sell on the state’s insurance exchange, and mimicking how Massachusetts provided universal healthcare.

“Just as [healthcare] was a lightning rod and a rallying cry for opponents of the law for the past seven years, now it’s becoming a rallying cry for the supporters,” said Dr. Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) introduced a bill Friday that would make California the first state to adopt single-payer, also called “Medicare for all.”

Colorado had a similar measure on the state ballot last November. Most state Democrats came out against the initiative, which would have nearly doubled state spending and payroll taxes in the first full year alone. “ColoradoCare” would have depressed jobs and wages, and voters rejected it by a massive four-to-one margin.

California’s taxes are already about 60% higher, per capita, than Colorado’s. If California decides to go enact single payer, it’s impossible to say where the money will come from. But it’s easy to predict where the jobs will go: Away.

FACT-CHECKING: Is Trump Responsible for Drop in National Debt by $12 Billion Since Taking Office?

Probably not, but that’s nothing compared to Obama’s routine claims (deceptions, really) about being a bigly deficit-cutter.

SKYNET SMILES: Supersmart Robots Will Outnumber Humans Within 30 Years, Says SoftBank CEO.

These beliefs underpin the wave of large and surprising deals the Japanese internet and telecommunications giant has pulled off in the past year, [SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son] said on Monday. These include starting a $100 billion technology-investment fund with a Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, buying British microprocessor designer ARM Holdings PLC for $32 billion and acquiring U.S. asset manager Fortress Investment Group PLC for $3.3 billion.

This 30-year forecast created urgency, Mr. Son said in a speech at the telecom industry’s biggest trade show, Mobile World Congress. “That is why I’m in a hurry to aggregate cash to invest.”

In a brief interview after his speech, Mr. Son said his $100 billion project with the Saudis, dubbed the SoftBank Vision Fund, was bigger than the $65 billion in combined investments from the venture-capital world. He said the SoftBank Vision Fund would be focused. “Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, smart robots: those are the three main things I’m interested in,” he said.

The Internet of Things is the technology world’s term for connecting everyday objects, from refrigerators to sneakers, to the web.

Mr. Son said he didn’t expect the planned initial public offering of oil colossus Saudi Aramco to affect the size of Vision Fund. “They are a great partner,” he said of the Saudis. “They’re already rich. They have lots of money, even before the IPO.”

The Saudis already outsource much of their labor to millions of foreign guest-workers from India, Pakistan, and around the Arab world. Their numbers are huge — it’s estimated that about 31% of the Saudi population of 27 million is made up of expatriates. The wages those workers repatriate help keep their home economies afloat. If Son is correct, that cashflow is about to be diverted away from the Third World, and towards Japan, China, the U.S., and other makers of automated systems.

Those workers getting the boot and that money drying up could create the next big disruptive wave to come out of the Middle East and South Asia.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. No, Obamacare Has Not Saved American Lives.

Some studies do suggest that health insurance can saves lives. But these focus either on individuals with private coverage or on the Massachusetts health-care reform law of 2006, which primarily expanded private coverage within the Bay State. The ACA, by contrast, is primarily an expansion of Medicaid; in recent years, the share of Americans with private insurance has declined.

In 2007, just prior to the Great Recession, 66.8 percent of non-elderly Americans had private insurance. By 2015, two years into the ACA’s expansion, that share had declined to 65.6 percent. Taking the larger economic picture into account by looking back to 2007 is crucial, because the private-insurance rate fluctuates with employment. Between 2007 and 2010, employment fell by 5.5 percent and private coverage fell by 7 percent. Between 2010 and 2015, employment rose by 8.8 percent and private coverage rose by 9.5 percent.

ACA implementation has coincided with an increase in private coverage because it occurred during a period of job growth. But 300,000 fewer Americans have private coverage today than would have it if the ratio of coverage to employment had remained at its 2007–10 level over the last six years.

Left unsaid? About 75% of those who applied for coverage under ObamaCare’s expanded Medicaid program had been eligible for Medicaid under the old, unexpanded program. Essentially then, ObamaCare was a wrecking ball aimed at private insurance, and a multi-billion-dollar advertising buy for public assistance.

PRIORITIES: Trump Seeks Sharp Increases In Military Spending, “Drastic Cuts” To State Department, EPA.

It ought to be an entertaining speech he gives to Congress tomorrow night. I’ll report in to the PJMedia homepage at about 8:45pm Eastern for the first Trump Administration primetime drunkblog.

TO A PROGRESSIVE THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS SUFFICIENTLY PROGRESSIVE: Cornel West Lacks ‘Faith’ in ‘Progressive Vision’ of Black Caucus.

ANDREW MALCOLM: The truth about Trump’s worrisome war on media.

President Trump let slip the secret during his first news conference. Here’s what he told shouting reporters trying to trip him:

“I’ll tell you something, I’ll be honest — because I sort of enjoy this back-and-forth. And I guess I have all my life.”

As do his supporters and a good number of detractors, who’ve turned Trump appearances and his press secretary’s news briefings into TV ratings hits on cspan.org and cable.

Enough Americans have witnessed or perceived media misinterpretations and bias to enjoy seeing its elite members handed back some guff, even crudely. And there’s now a vibrant, imperfect social media on 24-hour online patrol.

Meanwhile, media members who blithely passed along Obama’s serial lies about, among many things, keeping your doctor and health plan under ObamaCare, are now on Alpha Alert for Trump untruths, visibly relishing each one.

The Washington media needs to stop whining, get off their high horse and do the jobs they chose, reporting accurately what a president says now and putting it in true context to what he said last year or last night.

It isn’t whining — it’s anger. And it may be with us a while, because the Democratic-Operatives-with-Bylines lost big in November, and the second stage of grief is the most difficult one to get through.

PUTTING THE A.I. IN C.I.A.:The Data-Driven Transformation of Intelligence.

Data correlation has always been part of intelligence tradecraft, however, it is largely still a product of analysts laboriously reading through of mountains of intelligence reports. There is a limit to the type of reports available to analysts, who have limited time to make assessments. There is a better way for analysts to tackle intelligence problems given the amount of data that exists—or could exist with the right focus—on just about anything or anyone.

Imagine if in the post-mortem of the Crimea invasion analysts, working with data scientists, could take the datasets tied to the missed indicators and fold them into algorithms that drive artificial intelligence (AI). This AI could then help analysts predict future outcomes and focus resources. As this human-machine ”red” teaming matures, AI could learn to think like an adversary by looking for data, in specific combinations and quantities, to anticipate when little green men will be on the move, for example.

A very real problem in the intelligence community is a tendency towards consensus-building — squashing the insights of more imaginative analysts.

A.I.-driven analysis might not be any better than the traditional kind, but it might provide renegade analysts with an electronic imprimatur for breaking through the consensus.

“PORNO FLICKS?” Rachel Dolezal, white woman who identifies as black, now jobless, may soon be homeless.

Rachel Dolezal, the infamous white woman who for years passed herself off as African American and rose to become head of an NAACP branch, is now jobless, on food stamps and expects to soon be homeless.

A defiant Dolezal, 39, recounted her current plight to The Guardian. Dolezal said she’s only been offered jobs in reality television and porno flicks. A friend helped her come up with the money for February’s rent and she doesn’t know how she’s going to pay for March.

And she still says she’s not white.

After lying to one employer and adopting a public persona which announced that she would be a difficult employee, Dolezal’s current situation shouldn’t come as any surprise.

ASIA PIVOT, MOSCOW EDITION: Russia to Deploy Division on Kuril Islands in 2017.

Those are the disputed islands just north of Japan which the Soviet Union seized from the Empire of Japan in the closing days of World War II.

THE SAD CAFE: Auto Makers Ask EPA’s Pruitt to Reverse Fuel-Economy, Emissions Decision.

YOUR CONGRESS AT WORK: Legislation Will Help Kentucky’s Bourbon Producers.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Rand Paul, Congressmen James Comer and Bret Guthrie have put their names on two pieces of legislation which they say will help the state’s bourbon producers.

The Advancing Growth in the Economy through Distilled (AGED) Spirits Act was filed in the U.S. Senate and it would help bourbon producers on their tax returns. Under current law, interest expenses are not deducted until the Bourbon is bottled and sold, which could be anywhere from 2 to 23 years after aging. This situation has been likened to a homeowner not being able to deduct the interest on a home mortgage until the sale of the house.

Eric Gregory, President, Kentucky Distillers’ Association, said, the act will free important capital on aging barrels, allowing distilleries to increase investments and create more jobs.

Sadly, there’s no legislation that can speed up the aging process, so it’s going to be a long while yet before bourbon producers are able to catch up with booming demand.

BUYING DIRECT: See How a Big Change in the Tech Accessory Business Will Save You Money.

OVERREACH: Iceland’s president wants to ban pineapple on pizza.

Perhaps President Gudni Johannesson should focus on more serious issues, like putting a stop to Chicago-style so-called “pizza.”

STATES’ RIGHTS? End ‘Federal Bullying’ of Marijuana, Says Colorado Congressman.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Texas Pre-School Teacher Suspended After Call to ‘Kill Some Jews’ on Social Media.

Anti-Semitic remarks made online by Nancy Salem, a teacher for 2 year-olds at the the Children’s Courtyard in South Arlington, Texas, resurfaced after a secretive campus watchdog group, Canary Mission, exposed her together with other 23 anti-Israel activists at the University of Texas. She’s is now subject to a pending investigation by the pre-school and is suspended from teaching, according to The Algemeiner.

On her now-deleted Twitter account, Salem made numerous derogatory comments about the Jewish people, including replying to a question “How many Jews died in the Holocaust?” with “Not enough…HAHAHAHA.”

In another tweet, she openly suggested murdering Jewish people: “Have a safe trip Lulu. I love you baby girl! See you in 3 weeks! Kiss the Palestine ground for me and kill some jews!”

Charming.

IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR: Why 1977 Might Be the Greatest Year in Music History.

I’M FILING THIS ONE AWAY FOR WHEN MY SONS ARE OLDER: Mom’s Care Package for Son in College Is a Box of Trash.