Name That Tune (hopefully every Friday)
As the computer in War Games asked, "Shall We Play a Game?"
Here's what we're gonna do, though this is subject to change based on listener input and what Dragon and I think works best.
Dragon will choose a well-known rock song (from the entire span of rock, not any one sub-category) from a year that starts with a 1, in other words from before the year 2000. He will play just enough of the very beginning of the song that he thinks you or I might be able to guess the song. I suspect that often we'll be talking about not much more than one second and almost never more than 3 seconds of music. He won't tell me what it is, so I'll be playing along with listeners. You text me your guess at 56690 and I'll give a shout-out on the air to the people who get it right. I'll tell Dragon my guess immediately but not on the air so that my guess isn't impacted by listeners' guesses, and because of the slight delay in a radio broadcast I generally will have made my guess at least 20 seconds before I see any listener's texted guess. Let's have some fun!
p.s. I really don't know other genres of music well enough to play this with, for example, rap or country music, so we're gonna stick with rock 'n' roll.
Just One Thing
President Joe Biden said Wednesday that his “help” for those with college and grad school debt is just a better version of the help that he claims rich people and corporations got from the Trump tax cut. This is a massive category error, conflating two things that are not the same in any important way. A tax cut is simply the government taking less of what you earned. So-called debt cancelation is forcing another citizen to bear the fiscal burden for a decision you made and from which you benefited. These two actions of government are, as my Australian wife would put it, like chalk and cheese, namely utterly dissimilar; all they have in common is a couple of letters in their names. Debt cancelation is a form of theft; tax cuts are exactly the opposite.
Today's Trememdous Guest
Chris Stirewalt has long been, in my opinion, the best political analyst in America. Chris is a scholar at AEI, contributing editor at The Dispatch, talking head at NewsNation, and aficionado of pickles and pink salad dressing.
He’s famous for, among other things, getting in trouble for correctly calling the result in Arizona during the 2020 presidential election, which seems like a weird thing to get in trouble for, but looking at how freakin’ insane Arizona is right now I guess it’s just that hard to be a sane person in an insane world.
Speaking of which, Chris’s new book is entitled “Broken News: Why the Media Rage Machine Divides America and How to Fight Back”
Chris Stirewalt - The Dispatch
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Other Stuff
Jefferson County is closing 16 elementary schools due to persistently declining district enrollment.
In a letter to parents, the superintendent, Tracy Dorland, wrote: "The hard truth is that Jeffco Public Schools had its highest school-aged population in 2001. In the last 21 years, declining birth rates and shifting demographics in our communities have brought us to a place where, as a District, we have enough seats for 96,000 students in our district-managed schools and we serve 69,000."
A JeffCo parent who was at Thursday night's School Board meeting said this: "From my end the bombshell tonight was the district admitting they Jeffco had the largest decline in the state during Covid. We lost 5,000 students. (Another parent) requested that they find out why students are leaving because we know they’re moving to nearby districts. It might be time to assess why kids are leaving and start listening to parents. They also admitted that a lack of decision making over the past 10 years has led to this."
Remember that JeffCo had the state's worst public health director during COVID and the worst district policies regarding masking. I'm not surprised that lots of people left. It was outrageous that the County Commissioners didn't get much more aggressive on pushing back on the district's and public health director's harmful mandates. So little backbone anywhere to be found. So many students paid the price.
This article has the list of schools to be closed and where those students will be redirected: Jefferson County School District recommends closing 16 elementary schools | Education | denvergazette.com
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I'm fine with the goal (and effect) of DACA, but I'm not fine with it being implemented by executive action rather than by legislation. DHS issues new DACA rule (msn.com)
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Who's going to be able to stop the Biden student-debt insanity in court? Maybe nobody, but not because it isn't illegal: Can Anyone Sue over Biden’s Student-Loan Lawlessness? | National Review
By the way, it sure seems like something would be VERY wrong with our legal system if a plainly illegal act (at least it's plain to me) can't be challenged because courts won't allow anyone to have standing.
Meanwhile, here's some GREAT commentary on Biden's lawless action from the Wall Street Journal which notes that Biden's action will actually make the problem worse: How Colleges Will Cash In on Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness - WSJ
.And some more excellent points by Bloomberg: Forgiving Student Loans Is a Costly Mistake
The Bloomberg editors conclude with this: "With one announcement, Biden has undermined any commitment to fiscal discipline, reinforced his party’s reputation for catering to elites, created a significant moral hazard, and likely made higher education less affordable for a generation. Canceling these debts may well please parts of Biden’s base. But everyone else will be stuck footing the bill."
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Tremendous science...I sure hope this works! This company is about to grow new organs in a person for the first time | MIT Technology Review
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Should the name of the town Silverthorne (here in Colorado) have an "e" at the end? The legend of the Silverthorne exit sign: How a possible mistake led to a historic name change (msn.com)
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This is extremely interesting biology! Extreme Lookalikes May Share Much Deeper Ties Than We Ever Realized : ScienceAlert
Today's Videos
Does Jamie Foxx do the best Donald Trump impression?
It's winter in Australia. This school paused classes so that kids could experience snow (many for the first time.)
You have GOT to be kidding me. I hope this young man got an insanely large tip. I mean, it's not just what he carried but check out how far he carried it!