Are Surveys About the Economy Really About Political Views?

The headline writers pounced on the plunge in the University of Michigan’s (UMich) much-watched index for consumer sentiment on April 11th.

Hennepin County (the largest county in Minnesota) Attorney Mary Moriarty is at it again.  Deemed the most “woke” prosecutor in America, she is refusing to charge state government employee Dylan Bryan Adams, a Minnesota Department of Human Services analyst, with any crimes after he was caught on camera by police vandalizing six Teslas in the Minneapolis area, causing over $20,000 worth of damage.  Instead of being charged with a felony, Adams isn’t being charged with anything.  Instead, he has been placed in a non-criminal “diversion” program.  No jail, no criminal record, and won’t even lose his job.  He remains free to vandalize again.

A strong message has been sent: it’s open season on Tesla, and any other business or individual that refuses to align with the Left’s agenda.  Last year, the offices of conservative Minnesota think tank, The American Experiment, as well as two other conservative organizations, were firebombed.  Amazingly, in a congested metro area where security cameras abound, neither Gov. Tim Walz’s state authorities nor Biden’s FBI and ATF could come up with any leads.  The crimes remain unpunished.

That is actually a company name that I am aware of. I don’t endorse it, although it might well be a very fine company. When I think of lost golf balls, I think about the very best memories of my childhood. Many people romanticize their childhood such that every day of the first few years of school was the best of their life. That was not the case for me. It took several more years of maturation before I could confidently participate in the struggles of growing up and fitting in. My relationship with my parents through the tough early years was tumultuous.

It worked out OK, though. During my high school years, when many of my peers fought with their parents for freedom from their control, my relationship with my parents was the best it had been — maybe the best it was ever to be. I played a lot of golf in high school, and I was good enough to be the last person cut from the school team four years in a row. Our team won the state championship most of those years.

Yes, we celebrated Earth Day (and also my brother’s birthday), and what could be more consequential than that?

Still, moving a few notches down the “significance” scale–or perhaps not–we discover that it’s also the 409th anniversary (on April 22, 1616) of the death of Miguel de Cervantes.

Cervantes’ greatest creation, Don Quixote, a lower-class (dare I say deplorable?) fellow who was driven to fantasies of heroism due to his mid-life immersion in, and obsession with, works of knightly valor, remains the most celebrated of Spanish literary characters, one whose quest to restore chivalric values to a society he thinks has abandoned them first involves his going mad (always a good start), and then–eventually and after a series of unlikely adventures during most of which he mistakes what’s taking place in the real world for figments of his fevered and highly colored imagination–resuming his own identity, and, shortly before dying, writing a will in which he threatens the disinheritance of his niece if she ever has anything to do with any man who has ever read a book about chivalry. (By this time, it’s evident that Quixote–or “Alonzo Quixano” as he should more properly be called–has, while coming to terms with his impending death and preparing to meet his God, finally come back down to earth.)

The authority of the judiciary in America stems from the creation of a Supreme Court in the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s own rulings about its powers and limits, and congressional enabling statutes for the lesser courts. In the early days of the country, the role of the Supreme Court as the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution was an open question. The Court, in a case called Marbury vs Madison, anointed itself as the sole authority. But over the years the Court has limited direct conflict with Congress and the Executive by also creating the “political question” doctrine. This doctrine permits the Court to graciously yield to one or both of its “co-equal” partners by essentially saying it is a matter for voters and not the Court.

The current Court has been slow to employ this card in the recent contretemps between the lesser courts and the Trump administration. Although one would not know it from the media, the Trump administration has not (yet) defied a court order. But lawfare is pushing the president to that point — and that may be the goal of the Progressive Project.

There was a joke we used to tell when I was a teenager in the 70s.

What are the top three clues that you’re a member of a bad church?
1. The choir wears leather robes.
2. The only song the organist knows is “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.
3. There are smoking and non-smoking sections in the sanctuary.

If you would indulge me for one last post before my leave of absence, I need to share some news.

Many of you know – at least those who’ve been tracking the past three years of my family adventures (including four 5150s and one call to the sheriff) – the past three years have been a sometimes dark and frightening journey. Although I’ve been vague on the details, let’s just say I often turned to my Catholic friends who are familiar with the prayers of deliverance… and so much more… in my most desperate times. We never knew what we’d be facing as each day came, hoping we would get through it without incident. Yet, despite the incredible stress and my now rekindled case of PTSD (a little exaggeration), God has been there the entire time, applying His mysterious boundaries while allowing just enough suffering to gain His intended result.

The original purpose of 9-11 trutherism — the belief that America attacked itself on that awful day — was a leftist one. The purpose was to take the blame off of Muslims and put it on bigoted Islamophobic Republicans. This served the political purposes of liberals at the time. In the same way that the original purpose of JFK assassination conspiracy theories was to shift the blame from a communist to the CIA, which was on the warpath against communism at the time.

It’s easy to forget the original context of these stupid ideas. Sen. Ron Johnson seems to have forgotten completely. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. Apparently things have changed, and now these theories somehow serve the purposes of what passes for conservatism.

I just completed On Democracies and Death Cults by Douglas Murray. Like all of his books, this one is beautifully written and remarkably perceptive. In this case, I chose to listen to the audio version of the book, and I recommend it over the written version if you have an Audible account. The reason for this is that Murray himself narrates the book, and no one can give to it the feeling that he projects as he reads his own words.

I have heard dozens of podcasts, read innumerable articles, and watched a number of videos describing the events of October 7th, 2023. With each new one, I feel like I cannot be moved any further, but am proven wrong in that by the pathos the descriptions inspire. I approached this book with that same sense, and once again I was devastated by the descriptions of the incredible inhumanity that was on display on that day and the days and weeks that followed, not just in Israel itself and Gaza, but on the streets of almost every western country where mobs of demented antisemites raved and praised the barbaric actions of Hamas and the ordinary Gazans who followed them into southern Israel.

If I live in a jurisdiction in which the district attorney expressly refuses to prosecute anyone who steals purses from old ladies carrying less than $10,000 in cash and valuables, does that establish a legal right to steal purses from old ladies? If a cop or some do-gooder grabs me a few seconds after they hear some annoying old lady yelling about being robbed, can they take that purse from me and return it to her without a hearing or due process?

We live in a jurisdiction (the USA) in which a lawless chief enforcement official (Joseph Robinette Biden) not only refused to enforce immigration law but actively imported illegal aliens.  Ten or twenty million purse-snatchers and their allies believe that a right to keep the purse has been established.