Monthly Archives: July 2025

Because I Feel Like It

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It’s Funny Friday. By my stan dards.

I put a bet on a horse that had excellent breeding. After the horse left the starting gate, he stopped and closed it behind him.

I put a bet on a horse to come in at 10 to 1—and it did. Unfortunately all the others came in at 12:30.

What’s black and white and eats like a horse? A zebra.

Some racehorses are staying in a stable. One of them starts to boast about his track record. “In the last 15 races, I’ve won eight of them!”
Another horse breaks in: “Well in the last 27 races, I’ve won 19!”
“Oh that’s good, but in the last 36 races, I’ve won 28!” says another.
At this point, the horses notice a greyhound, who has been sitting there listening. “I don’t mean to boast,” says the greyhound, “but in my last 90 races, I’ve won 88 of them!”
The horses are clearly amazed. “Wow!” says one, after a hushed silence. “A talking dog!”

Three boys see a fire engine with a dog go by and discuss what his job is. “Crowd control?” says one boy. “He’s the mascot,” says the second boy. The third boy nods sagely: “He finds fire hydrants.”

A woman brings her parrot to the vet. The parrot is stiff and lifeless.
“I’m sorry ma’am, but this parrot is dead.”
“How can you tell so quickly?” replies the woman. “Isn’t there a way to be absolutely certain?”
So, the vet whistles and a beautiful black Labrador Retriever walks in the examining room. The Lab sniffs around the parrot for a few moments, then looks at the vet with sad eyes and shakes his head.
“A dog shakes its head and I’m supposed to believe that?!” cries the woman. “You’re going to have to do more to prove that my poor parrot is dead!”
So the vet leaves momentarily, comes back with a cat and puts it on the table beside the parrot. The cat looks closely at the parrot, walks around it, prods it a bit, then shakes his head and jumps off the table.
Finally, the woman seems convinced. As she turns for the door, the vet announces that she owes him $500.
“$500?!” the woman asks. “How in the world could it be that much just to tell me my parrot is dead?”
“Well, it would have been a lot cheaper, but with that lab report and cat scan….”

A dog walks into a pub, and takes a seat. He says to the barman, “Can I have a pint of lager and a packet of crisps please.”
The barman says, “Wow, that’s amazing! You should join the circus!”
The dog replies, “Why? Do they need electricians?

A Brief Thought on Trade Negotiations

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There’s this from a Wall Street Journal article centered on European Union and People’s Republic of China trade relations:

Chinese and European leaders must “make the right strategic choices” amid a fast-changing and tumultuous global environment, Chinese leader Xi Jinping told visiting EU leaders in Beijing on Thursday, according to Chinese state media.

The right strategic choices. This kind of rhetoric is all too typical of Xi’s and his minions’ demands on any subject, whether on trade or other nations’ decisions regarding their own national security. In the end, it’s Xi’s demand that other nations, here European, must make those choices comport with Xi’s positions.

Neither Xi nor his ministers are negotiating seriously or in good faith when they make such demands; this is emphasized by the PRC’s “rationing” of critical raw materials. It’s time the rest of us pushed back—hard. We need to respond by saying that as long as that’s the PRC position, there can be no negotiation, no discussion, since the PRC is not operating in good faith.

And then act on those words and walk away. Continue by moving on and elsewhere without the PRC, saying publicly that Xi knows how to contact them when he’s ready to be serious.

Gerrymandering

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It’s time to ride this horse again, this time due to a Wall Street Journal op-ed on racial gerrymandering, Texas, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which sought to balance minority access to electing government representatives with majority access (itself an unconstitutional unequal treatment law IMNSHO).

The op-ed centered on Texas’ move to redraw its current Federal House of Representative districts and “liberal” beefs that Texas’ current districts already disadvantage Hispanics is, here, irrelevant; it’s that unequal treatment that matters.

The second clause of the first Article of the 14th Amendment of our Constitution makes the matter crystalline.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States…nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Gerrymandering on the basis of race is clearly unconstitutional, and that VRA should have been struck down long since—the latest opportunity having come when the Supreme Court released the Southern States from government oversight regarding their voting laws. Beyond that, one of the central privileges of a citizen of the United States is the ability to vote in an election (in this post, a national election) and have his vote count as much—neither more nor less—than the vote of any other citizen of the United States.

The concept—equal protection of the laws—extends easily to political parties: gerrymandering on the basis of political party also plainly denies us average Americans our equal treatment by limiting the value of our votes in some districts and artificially increasing the value of our votes in other districts solely on the basis of political stance.

The clear, constitutional, equal treatment solution to this is to draw our Congressional districts without regard to political belief, race, or any other criterion other than our status as American citizens (and citizens of the State in which we reside, as the first clause of that Article specifies), but strictly within (or as practice has overcome the explicitly stated requirement) within the spirit of equal population requirement stated in Article I, Section 2 of our Constitution:

The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand….

Thus: beginning with the geographic center of the State, draw the districts as squares, with the only deviation from a straight line being at a State’s boundary with an adjacent State. Otherwise, the number of districts must equal the apportionment of Representatives the State’s total population allows, and each of the districts must be geographically sized so that each of the districts has substantially equal populations of citizens.

We’re all Americans, and so we’re all equal under law. Race, political position—religion, etc—are wholly irrelevant to this.

My Sympathy Meter…

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…is flashing Empty. On a note related to another post of mine, there’s this out of Tucson, AZ:

Tucson Unified School District (TUSD), based in Tucson, Arizona, is reportedly facing financial and enrollment struggles after universal school choice passed in the state in 2022.
A TUSD official told KGUN that approximately 4,000 students used vouchers to either go to private schools or homeschool.
The trend of parents overlooking TUSD cost the school district about $20 million. TUSD’s Chief Financial Officer, Ricky Hernandez, told the local outlet that TUSD is “preparing for continued declines in enrollment as a result” of vouchers.

This, after TUSD as a whole had these test score outcomes, as of the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years:

In Tucson Unified District, 28% of elementary students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 23% tested at or above that level for math. Also, 27% of middle school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 19% tested at or above that level for math. And 48% of high school students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 42% tested at or above that level for math.

Here’s a thought—bear with me on this; it’s a strange concept for many—maybe the TUSD managers and teachers should do a better job of teaching the children in their educational charge the basics and advanced principles of reading, writing, and arithmetic, with budgeting, finance, and economics added in for the district’s grade schools, junior highs, and high schools, respectively. Room in the school day for that last, especially, could be made by eliminating the claptrap of DEI, “flexible” gender, pornographic books in grade school libraries, and other Woke ideologies.

A Clear Choice

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The recently passed OBBBA has Federal funding for private school tuition in the form of tax credits—private schools being, primarily, charter and voucher schools. States must opt into the program, though; the tax credits won’t be available automatically.

As The Wall Street Journal headline put it, Blue States Face Big Decision. And then,

Now comes a protracted debate at the state level. Progressives and public-school groups object to funding private schools and say the new program will hurt public education. Supporters say the money will give families options outside of their neighborhood school.

The thing is, though, public schools are already beyond increases in hurting, especially in blue States—pupil test scores are bad and falling (rising recently only against the prior Wuhan Virus Situation school lockout steep drop), and public school’s pupil test scores especially lag those private schools’ student outcomes, as well as the test scores of homeschooled students.

A clear choice, indeed, and over the coming months we’ll see very clearly just how opposed to school choice and children’s education are Progressive-Democrat politician-run States and municipalities, and just how far in thrall are those politicians to teachers unions.