1) Yesterday Chris Bray had a terrific piece on the paradox of blue cities/states still existing, yet constantly collapsing.
2)
3) It comes down to this: most of these states (NY, CA, IL) are big with large populations and long established economies.chrisbray.substack.com/p/what-blue-zo…
4) They don't just collapse as an out-of-style Las Vegas casino implodes. Rather, think of it like a slow spreading cancer.
5) As he points out, people move from the inner cities. Yep. We've seen that. But then they go to liberal enclave suburbs & those begin to decay.
6) He gave an example of a burb close to Groomer City (SF) that saw its fire dept cut by more than half. A single house fire didn't see a fire truck for 14 minutes, by which time it had spread to three more houses. The police forces in many of these burbs have dropped by half.
7) So, eventually those people move to still another burb and metastacize it.
8) Millions, however, have been slowly locked into place by high mortgage payments and fear they can't find a job elsewhere. Slowly they become captives in their own little (now unsafe) enclaves.
9) Needless to say, the public school element of all this is in more obvious collapse. Here in Chandler, AZ, a 250,000 burb of Phoenix, the school district estimated it would be down by 800 students next fall.
Try 1400.
10) Homeschool, charters, privates are soaring.
11) You are also seeing these burbs increasingly spend normal budget money for things other than what it was meant, thereby requiring constant new bond issues to fix potholes.
12) In other words, don't expect to see the equivalent of one of those glaciers breaking off and falling into the sea. Rather, it's more like a slow sinkhole.
13) When people say "enough" and rise up? I have no idea. Years of propaganda and numbing have had an effect.
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1) Thinking about a few recent departures, mostly in comms, from Team Trump. Understand that almost any job in DC other than senator is relentlessly hard.
2) It's not just 7 days a week. Because of the 24/7 news cycle, it's 24/7, 7 days a week. There is no rest, no break.
3) It is especially hard on staffers, who are very poorly paid for the living costs there; and on people who work in comms.
4) Just a fact of life: you bosses CHANGE THEIR MINDS. Either new info comes to them, or a pushback that they didn't expect arises and they have to tweak.
5) Yes, the principals have to explain this, but more likely on a constant basis it falls to their comms people.
6) The very best comms people are people such as Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Karoline Leavitt who LOVE THE SPARRING AND COMBAT.
1) I just completed a new one-semester course for Wild World of History () called "Good Government," a civics government course that will be paired with my "Good Economics" course. GG will be available by April 1, GE by July 1. Convention price on each.wildworldofhistory.com
2) Not only do I discuss what the Constitution says as well as our other founding documents---about the way government "should" work---but also infuse it with a lot of history about how things actually unfolded.
3) For example, why the 2-party system (which really cannot be . . .
3) Contd . . . broken by a third party due to the single member district/winner take all structure, and how the system set up in the 1820s by Martin Van Buren ensured that due to the "spoils system" (which since has been "reformed" to make it even worse) ensures that . . .
Many of us noticed this. There are several causes: 1) Most MAGA (indeed, most non DemoKKKrat Terrorist activists) do NOT want to do politics 24/7. We elected Trump, and we want the GOP to support him and enact his policies.
3) But then there are activist Rs who have certain axes to grind. These fall roughly into the following categories: a) the anti-Trump, anti-MAGA neocons/traditionalists who think they can wait out Trump; b) certain factions within MAGA jockeying for power and influence. . . .
3) contd . . .c) would be candidates for 2028 who need Trump's image tarnished just enough that they can say, "Good idea but I would have done it better." d) Outright obstructionists like Randy Paul and Masshole who oppose everything ("GET OFF MY YARD.")
1) Per my (and his) notion that Trump won the exchange with Tampon Timmy, in his "Coffee and Covid" @jchilders98 noted four significant victories right before Tampon buckled:
*CNN ran not one, two, three, but FOUR polls supporting deportations.
@jchilders98 *8th Circuit okd pepper spray
*SecWar Hegseth okd a major base of operations at Ft. Snelling (gee, doesn't sound like anyone is leaving, right)?
*Kash Patel announced fraud investigations of the civilian supporters of the Skinny Minny fraud.
@jchilders98 *In a first, Tampon also acknowledged that MN will detain ALL illegals arrested into its "Corrections Department."
*As I predicted, the local Nat Guard and Po Po were inevitably drawn in on the side of ICE when a clash became violent.
Ok, I see tons of spoogie disinformation, including supposedly some on our side who think Trump "lost" in several developments. Nope. He won every one.
1) In the NON PUBLIC meeting with Tampon Timmy and Freybread, Trump came out and SAID WHAT THEY AGREED TO.
2) Now like a good lawyer, he has them "On record." They can LATER claim they didn't say that, but too late. Trump already gained the narrative and will urge ICE on saying "Walz promised support."
3) Whatever he does, Waltz loses as he is either a liar or ineffective.
4) Then you have these goobergrillers who think that sending Bovino back to the Border (ah, you do know he is the head of the Border Patrol, not ICE, right?) is weakness.
5) Bovino is the equivalent of a colonel or a one-star general. He was replaced by a three-start, Homan.
1) I still am not sure what the Greenland thing is really all about. Trump did mention---and this may be important---the "Golden Dome" project in the context of Greenland.
2) If that is the case, then there are apparently better, more effective "shoot down" windows there.
3) But it's all speculation. What is NOT speculation is that Trump has been riding this horse for a while. Clearly someone in his staff over NINE YEARS has been giving him info on this.
4) Is it in Denmark's interest to sell? Absolutely not. What country wants to lose empire?
5) Is it in NATO's interest for Greenland to sell? Depends. If you're talking pure strategy, yes. The US can provide far better strategic defense than Denmark can there. But would it weaken NATO? Probably because the US, like Homey the Clown, don't play NATO anymore.