Had enough yet

[Lee Chowaniec]

Ukraine air force just got bigger. Someone gave Kyiv more Mig 29’s

While reading media reports that claim:

A third of Ukraine has been destroyed, 11 million Ukrainians have been displaced, 4 million are refugees, thousands brutally slaughtered and/or raped,

The horrors of living under Russian rule and suffering from food and heat shortages,

The prediction of a lasting war where Putin’s strategy has shifted to smothering the Donbas region and to continue to indiscriminately slaughter Ukrainians,

Where Putin now promises dire consequences to any country who dare supply Ukraine with weaponry,

It was encouraging to read a report on countries having the balls to supply Ukraine with Migs and parts. Someone is listening to Zelenskyy’s cry for military equipment support, here and now.

Bravo! About time!

Ukraine air force just got bigger. Someone gave Kyiv more Mig 29’s

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...98f11bd7f1542f

[Lee Chowaniec]

Massive increase in Black Americans murdered was result of defund the police movement

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ma...06cb168f7cc99d

Support of Black Lives Matter and calls to defund the police reverberated across America in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, igniting social justice protests and riots at a time when the coronavirus and lockdowns upended society in unprecedented ways. What was left in 2020's wake was a massive increase in the number of murders, dealing a disproportionate blow to Black Americans.

Murders across the board spiked by nearly 30% in 2020 compared to the year prior, according to FBI data, marking the largest single-year increase in killings since the agency began tracking the crimes. Among Black Americans, the number of deaths spiked by more than 32% compared to 2019.

In 2019, at least 7,484 Black Americans were murdered. That number shot up to at least 9,941 murders in 2020, meaning there was an increase of 2,457 Black Americans murdered over the previous year.

The number of Black murders was also far higher than White murders in 2020. The FBI data shows there 7,043 White people murdered that year, meaning 2,898 more Black people were killed compared to Whites. The figures are more staggering considering White Americans make up 76% of the population compared to Black Americans representing only 13%, according to Census data.

[mark blazejewski]

President Biden has been warning the American people of upcoming food shortages due to necessary sanctions against Russia.

Biden warns of 'real' food shortage following sanctions on Russia
'The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia'

Reference: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bid...nctions-russia

Strange, but during the build-up to, and since the start of, the Ukrainian-Russian war, these incidents have occurred:

West Side food processing plant left with smoke damage after fire, SAFD says
Fire was called in around 9:30 p.m. in 700 block of Merida Street

https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021...ire-safd-says/

Explosion at food processing plant leaves 7 workers injured

https://www.plantservices.com/indust...rkers-injured/

Plane crashes into Idaho potato and food processing plant, killing the pilot, cops say

BY MADDIE CAPRON APRIL 14, 2022 3:14 PM

https://www.centredaily.com/news/nat...260423897.html

APRIL 15, 2022 12:07 AM

Fire Destroys Salinas Food Processing Plant

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/loca...plant/2864225/

Hmm, this analysis is interesting, eh?

Strange Trend of Food Processing Plant Fires Appears Across the US

At least sixteen fires have broken out at food processing plants, impacting the nation's supply of beef and poultry

https://timcast.com/news/strange-tre...across-the-us/

[mark blazejewski]

President Biden has been warning the American people of upcoming food shortages due to necessary sanctions against Russia...

Reference: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bid...nctions-russia

Strange, but during the build-up to, and since the start of, the Ukrainian-Russian war, these incidents have occurred:

https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2021...ire-safd-says/

https://www.plantservices.com/indust...rkers-injured/

https://www.centredaily.com/news/nat...260423897.html

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/loca...plant/2864225/

Hmm, this analysis is interesting, eh?

https://timcast.com/news/strange-tre...across-the-us/

I posted on #3423 at 8:23 p.m.

This was posted by the NY Post at 8:27 p.m.

Plane crashes into Georgia General Mills plant

By Jesse O’Neill
April 21, 2022 8:27pm

A small plane crashed into a General Mills plant in Georgia Thursday evening.

The crash happened just after 7 p.m., shortly after takeoff and less than a mile away from Covington Municipal Airport’s runway, 30 miles east of Atlanta, according to WAGA-TV.

Pictures of the scene published by the station showed thick black smoke rising from the plant and several damaged trailers.

It was not immediately clear if anyone was injured, the station said.

Reference: https://nypost.com/2022/04/21/plane-...l-mills-plant/

There have been at least seventeen accidents involving food processing plants since mid-December, 2021.

More interesting, two have crashed into two food processing plants in one week.

Nothing to see here, right?

[Lee Chowaniec]

Going green – financial and environmental costs / impacts

A Buffalo News report today claims ‘NFTA testing all-electric buses as part of its plan to ditch diesel – converting 1/3 of its fleet within 5-6 years.

The NFTA now maintains a fleet of 330 full size buses – a third powered by diesel engines, a third diesel-electric hybrids and a third by compressed natural gas.

10 buses were ordered at $1 million per bus - compared to about $550,000 for a new diesel bus. Because national and state policy assigns a top priority to reducing and even eliminating engine emissions, the goal is now an authority priority, too. It’s all about air quality.

Buffalo and its cold winters present another challenge – heat for an electric bus. Sweet explained that each bus will be equipped with a 225-horsepower diesel engine to power heaters, since electric buses produce no excess heat on their own and batteries fail below 40 degrees. The auxiliary diesels provide reliable heat for a bus stranded during a snowstorm, he said, and will prove cost effective – even if not totally zero emission.

No mention of battery shelf life, toxins, environmental impacts, or battery disposal.

The embedded costs of going green

https://principia-scientific.com/the...64be3c52b46a62

What is a battery?’ Nicholas Tesla said it best when he called it an Energy Storage System. That’s an important distinction.

They do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.

Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?

A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.”

Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?”

“Going Green” may sound like the Utopian ideal and are easily espoused, catchy buzzwords, but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth’s environment than meets the eye, for sure.

[Lee Chowaniec]

80% of Americans have had enough

Yes, you can fool some of the people all the time but not all the people forever. 80% of Americans polled express the country is headed in the wrong direction seeing through the disinformation.

"This ain’t your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said during remarks in Seattle, as he described the difficulty in getting Republican support for his climate change and other goals in Congress. He promoted a climate agenda that has largely gone unfulfilled. The immediate demands of the presidency, including the seismic forces of a pandemic and a war in Ukraine, have consumed more of his time than he had anticipated and taken him away from the domestic agenda he wants to sell.

“What I’m concerned about is that I have been so focused on whatever the immediate emergency is, we haven’t sold the American people what we’ve actually done.” And then he goes on to tout his accomplishments.

Nor is this my father’s Democratic Party. A moderate party at one time that has been usurped by the radical Marxist leftwing and led by a feckless, dithering old man who had promised to be a moderate, but acting too often as a socialist he declared not to be.

Trump may have been hated, and continues to be hated and feared, but he has not been the president for the past 15 months and responsible for a tanking economy, an open border policy and crisis, surging crime, supply shortages, a 5% mortgage interest rate (highest in years), and an administration and supporting media that finds the most preposterous excuse / blame reasons to hold him harmless.

The people are seeing through the administration and Obama’s nonsense that the disinformation is coming from only the Republican side and that it needs to be regulated by Big Tech social media outlets. That the Republicans are the existential threat to democracy and that their narrative should be censored.

How much do Americans have to sacrifice because of the cost of ‘green’ energy policies that rob them at the dinner table and have to remain silent for fear of intimidation if they dare speak out. Biden spending billions on new green energy programs and now on making military vehicles ‘climate’ friendly when the real threat is to the public’s ability to survive while the government will be spending billions on unachievable / unaffordable energy programs and costly social programs.

The left is making every effort to demonize FOX as the purveyor of lies and disinformation. Yet it is the #1 watched cable news network, where CNN is floundering and just lost its CNN+ pay for cable news show, failing to draw viewers.

Even though Biden’s handling of the war is receiving overall approval, he is not polling well as many believe he did too little too late to prepare Ukraine knowing an attack was imminent.

The midterm Congressional elections will show where the public’s minds and hearts are. In the 2024 presidential election, the voters are so screwed should Biden or Trump run and become the nominees – or Harris, Clinton, Sanders, or a slew of equally toxic / inept Republicans.

How sad that we have become so polarized by the very people we elected to office to unify us and act in our best interest. IMHO, I believe America will not yield to becoming a Marxist-socialist country. At least I hope not!

We are so screwed!

[mark blazejewski]

80% of Americans have had enough...

We are so screwed!

Nah, America is blessed with a leader of great foresight.

Biden warns of 'real' food shortage following sanctions on Russia
'The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia'

Reference: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bid...nctions-russia

Consider Biden's Russian-generated food shortage prediction.

Who other than Biden could presuppose such a villainous actor and predict the consequences of its evil deeds?

I wonder if Russian chickens have illegally entered through America's porous southern border in order to function as a Gallus Gallus Domesticus Fifth Column?

Bird flu is killing millions of chickens and turkeys across the US
Published: April 7, 2022 8.27am EDT

An outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in chicken and turkey flocks has spread across 24 U.S. states since it was first detected in Indiana on Feb. 8, 2022. Better known as bird flu, avian influenza is a family of highly contagious viruses that are not harmful to wild birds that transmit it, but are deadly to domesticated birds. As of early April, the outbreak had caused the culling of some 23 million birds from Maine to Wyoming. Yuko Sato, an associate professor of veterinary medicine who works with poultry producers, explains why so many birds are getting sick and whether the outbreak threatens human health.

Reference: https://theconversation.com/bird-flu...-the-us-180299

Perhaps our Great Leader, who publicly disguises himself as an incontinent, senile, almost impossible-to-manage puppet, can compel his FDA to realize that they do not exist to exclusively serve the needs of Big Pharm, eh?

[Lee Chowaniec]

Americans are less divided than you think

Americans are deeply frustrated with the government in Washington. They see many problems need addressing, but partisan polarization has created persistent gridlock. It is easy to assume that the polarization in Congress is a mirror of the American people – after all, Congress is elected by the people. Unfortunately, voters are being dealt a lousy hand in having to choose the lesser of two evils!

In fact, the American people are much less polarized than Congress. Between a pandemic that wreaked havoc on everything from our mental health to supply chains, constant gridlock in Congress and the never-ending barrage of divisive messaging on cable news and social media, it is easy to feel like everything is broken.

Americans were losing confidence in our government and institutions even before the pandemic. Voter turnout in 2014 was lower than at any point since World War II. A 2021 Gallup poll found that a record low of 39% of people trust the federal government to handle international problems. More than 70% of Americans agree on most solutions to the key challenges of our time.

That gap isn’t confined to our opinions on specific issues; it extends to our understanding of our fellow Americans. For example, the Beyond Conflict report also found that “Americans believe that members of the other party dehumanize, dislike, and disagree with their own party about twice as much as they actually do.”

So what is it we agree on? Public Agenda’s Hidden Common Ground reports found high levels of agreement among Americans on a wide variety of issues including climate change, COVID-19, economic opportunity, racism, police reform and more.

Perhaps even more important, why don’t we know that we agree? The first place to look is at who stands to benefit from a divided America. It’s not all cable news, but some; not all social media but some; not all politicians, but some who act as merchants of division.

[Lee Chowaniec]

Ukraine: the present and future cost of war

We are first learning of the impact the Ukraine war is having on global economies involved in the Ukraine war. President Biden cautioned Americans that they would be impacted by the war and that 70% of inflation can be attributed to the war.

The majority of Americans are not buying Biden’s claim of successes, rather looking at their pocketbooks and the impact his total domestic and foreign policies are having on inflation. Whatever, don’t expect any inflation relief in the near future.

World governments confront grim Ukraine toll

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...eb6d1c8694678e

WASHINGTON—Top world financial officials gathered in Washington this past week confronted a grim picture of the growing economic costs of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the challenges they face to help pay Ukraine’s short- and long-term bills.

Ukraine needs around $5 billion a month in budgetary support for up to five months and roughly $600 billion for a broader rebuilding effort, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Thursday at a forum hosted by the World Bank during spring meetings held with the International Monetary Fund.

The task comes at a challenging time for the world economy. Nations including the U.S. are grappling with their own problems, including soaring inflation and slowing growth

Meanwhile, the World Bank estimates the physical damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure and buildings at $60 billion so far. Predicting the extent of the damage and the cost of reconstruction is difficult as the war continues, officials said. Clearly the amounts will be huge.


BTW – An interesting read on Ukraine history

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...1423e2b4c80e47

[mark blazejewski]

I support U.S. efforts to supply arms to Ukraine in such a way as to reverse the Russian invasion , return peace to the Ukraine, and to assist the victimized Ukrainian civilian population, but to do so without starting a nuclear World War Three.

With that said, I am very concerned about this comment made by Secretary Austin earlier today:

“...we want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory, we want to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine.”

Reference: https://www.politico.eu/article/us-u...military-help/

Reader, you will recall that Russia and the United States have long been at odds in Syria.

Reference: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54215915

In that connection, ask yourself what the U.S. reaction would have been if Putin or his defense minister had made this comment:

“...we want to see Syria remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory, we want to see the United States weakened to the point where it can’t do things like it is doing in Syria.”

[Lee Chowaniec]

Are the Democrats delusional


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...bb88ce6e3477cc

[Lee Chowaniec]

You just can’t stop stupid

As America continues to go into the dumper, frustration from moderate and independent voters continues to mount as extremist politicos and supporting media outlets on the left and right continue to foster lies and propaganda to further divide the country in their best interests.

While the left continues to focus and trash Trump at every opportunity to prevent his ever getting reelected, it is Biden who is president and running the show and doing a poor job of it. While the country is suffering the worst inflation in 40 years, an open an open border, drugs pouring in, crime waves rising, abandoning energy policies which has led to high gas prices, surging crime, supply issues, etc., Senator Warren in a CNN interview Sunday said that Democrats will be fine during the midterms if they continue to fight and get things done – to appease the policies of the far-left socialists.

Biden promised he was not a socialist. He has taken a left turn and has embraced policies embraced by the extreme Marxist-Socialists. Embracing such policies, in fact, doubling down on them, which has resulted in middle class hardships.

16 months into his presidency and Biden is still blaming Trump, greedy capitalists, and everyone but himself for his failed domestic and foreign policies. When you are pissing off your own party to the extent he is, that is really saying something.

You must give Biden credit for choosing a vice president more inept than him. He would have been removed from office by now. Harris as president? OMG!

[mark blazejewski]

You must give Biden credit for choosing a vice president more inept than him. He would have been removed from office by now. Harris as president? OMG!

Yep.

Vice President Agnew was always hated by members of both parties and the press.

In that connection, Nixon's biggest strategic mistake was to throw Agnew to the curb in favor of Ford. Silly Nixon, he thought that Ford would be easily confirmed and would help him in the Congress on the Watergate front. Ford did help; help Nixon pack.

[mark blazejewski]

I support U.S. efforts to supply arms to Ukraine in such a way as to reverse the Russian invasion , return peace to the Ukraine, and to assist the victimized Ukrainian civilian population, but to do so without starting a nuclear World War Three.

With that said, I am very concerned about this comment made by Secretary Austin earlier today:

“...we want to see Ukraine remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory, we want to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine.”

Reference: https://www.politico.eu/article/us-u...military-help/

Reader, you will recall that Russia and the United States have long been at odds in Syria.

Reference: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54215915

In that connection, ask yourself what the U.S. reaction would have been if Putin or his defense minister had made this comment:

“...we want to see Syria remain a sovereign country, a democratic country able to protect its sovereign territory, we want to see the United States weakened to the point where it can’t do things like it is doing in Syria.”

Is this Russia's response to Austin's remarks?

U.S., allies promise heavy arms for Ukraine, shrug off Russian nuclear war warning

By Phil Stewart and Pavel Polityuk

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany/KYIV, April 26 (Reuters) - The United States and its allies pledged new packages of ever heavier weapons for Ukraine during a meeting on Tuesday at a German air base, brushing off a threat from Moscow that their support for Kyiv could lead to nuclear war.

U.S. officials have switched emphasis this week from speaking mainly about helping Ukraine defend itself to bolder talk of a Ukrainian victory that would weaken Russia's ability to threaten its neighbours.

Meanwhile, the powerful secretary of Russia's Security Council said Western and Ukrainian government policy was leading to the breakup of Ukraine, and he accused Washington of seeking to instil in Ukrainians hatred for everything Russian.

NATO allies have lately approved shipments of hundreds of millions of dollars in arms, including artillery and drones they held back from sending in earlier phases of the war, and want their allies to do the same.

"Nations from around the world stand united in our resolve to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia's imperial aggression," Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, welcoming officials from more than 40 countries to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, headquarters of U.S. air power in Europe. "Ukraine clearly believes that it can win, and so does everyone here."

In a notable shift, Germany, where the government had come under pressure after refusing Ukrainian pleas for heavy weapons, announced it would now send "Gepard" light tanks with anti-aircraft guns. read more

"The real significance of this decision lies not in the difference Gepards may make on the battlefield, but in the signal it sends," said Marcel Dirsus, non-resident fellow at Kiel University's Institute for Security Policy.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, assess that Russia will rely heavily on artillery strikes to pound Ukrainian positions while moving in ground forces from several directions to try to envelop and wipe out a significant chunk of Ukraine's military.

But Washington also estimates that many Russian units are depleted, with some operating with personnel losses as high as 30% - a level considered by the U.S. military to be too high to keep fighting indefinitely.

U.S. officials cite anecdotes like Russian tanks with lone drivers and no crew, and substandard equipment that is either prone to breakdowns or out of date.

In a marked escalation of Russian rhetoric, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked on state TV late on Monday about the prospect of World War Three and whether the current situation could be compared to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that nearly caused nuclear war.

"The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it," Lavrov said, according to the ministry's transcript of the interview. "NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war."

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby decried what he called Lavrov's "escalatory rhetoric".

Emergency management specialists and volunteers remove the debris of a theatre building destroyed in the course of Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine April 25, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

"It's obviously unhelpful, not constructive, and certainly is not indicative of what a responsible (world power) ought to be doing in the public sphere," Kirby said. "A nuclear war cannot be won and it shouldn't be fought. There's no reason for the current conflict in Ukraine to get to that level at all."

Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters while flying to Tuesday's meeting that the next several weeks in Ukraine would be "very, very critical".

"They need continued support in order to be successful on the battlefield. And that's really the purpose of this conference," he said, describing the aim as coordinating aid that includes heavy weapons such as howitzer artillery.

The head of Russia's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, told the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta that Ukraine could break into "several states". His comments suggested the war could lead to a carve-up of the country for which Moscow would seek to pin the blame on its opponents. read more

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, on a visit to Moscow, said he was ready to fully mobilise the organisation's resources to save lives and evacuate people from the besieged eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol. read more

"We are extremely interested in finding ways in order to create the conditions for effective dialogue, create the conditions for a ceasefire as soon as possible, create the conditions for a peaceful solution," Guterres said at a meeting with Lavrov, ahead of talks with President Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said no humanitarian corridors were operating on Tuesday as there had been no break in the fighting in Ukraine.

To the west of Ukraine, there were fears unrest could spread to Moldova, where Russian troops have occupied a separatist region along the Ukrainian border, Transdniestria, since the 1990s. Two radio masts were destroyed by explosions early on Tuesday, following other blasts in Transdniestria on Monday.

The separatist authorities said they were raising their terrorism threat level to red, while the Kremlin said it was concerned. Russia's TASS news agency quoted the separatist leader as saying the attacks could be traced back to Ukraine.

Moldova's pro-Western President Maia Sandu blamed the "escalation attempts" on "factions from within the Transdniestrian region who are pro-war forces and interested in destabilising the situation in the region". read more

Sandu's government expressed alarm last week after a top Russian general said Moscow aims to seize a path through Ukraine to Transdniestria, where he said Russian speakers needed protection from oppression. Moldova, an ex-Soviet state, has close cultural and linguistic ties to NATO member Romania.

Russia's two-month-old invasion of Ukraine has left thousands dead or injured, reduced towns and cities to rubble, and forced more than 5 million people to flee abroad.

Moscow calls its actions a "special operation" to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and the West call this a false pretext for an unprovoked war to seize territory.

Reference: https://www.reuters.com/business/aer...ed-2022-04-25/

[Lee Chowaniec]

Life is unfair.

Ah victimhood in America, we know it well!

Go ahead and cancel student loan debt. It may not be a great idea, but life is unfair.
Reuben Navarrette – Washington Post Writers Group-

Such was the observation of President John F. Kennedy who, at a press conference in March 1962, taught Americans the way of the world. Asked about Army reservists being called up to serve in Vietnam despite having “done their time” stationed in West Berlin, Kennedy did not mince words.

“There is always inequity in life,” he said. “Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic, and some are stationed in San Francisco. It’s very hard in the military, or in personal life, to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.”

I’m with Jack, who was indeed on the right track.

I accept that life is unfair. I don’t do victimhood. Blame it on my culture. Like most Mexican Americans, I was raised not to whine about perceived injustices. I was taught to work hard and make the sacrifices necessary to turn your dreams into your reality.

So rest assured, America. You will not be getting a bill for reparations from Mexican Americans for the pilfering of the Southwest from Mexico in 1848 – as part of the land grab known as the Mexican American War.

This “live and let live” business can be tricky. Our fellow Americans – and America herself – should not be let off the hook for centuries of theft, oppression, racism, discrimination and other unfair treatment.

Of course, Mexican Americans have been victimized throughout history. They still are. It just behooves us not to think like victims.

This sets us apart from many Americans, who worship at the altar of victimhood. They whine about how this is unfair, and that is unjust. Everyone is sure that everyone else is grafting their way onto Easy Street.

For some, the big graft is the decision by the Biden administration to cancel student loan debt for hundreds of thousands of borrowers.

The U.S. Department of Education recently canceled student loan debt for 40,000 people. The department is also offering credits to help another 3.6 million people pay off their loans under a plan that is designed to aid low-income borrowers and public servants.

Meanwhile, the administration also recently announced that it had canceled $7 billion in federal enough money after graduating. “Student loans were never meant to be a life sentence,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in a statement. “But it’s certainly felt that way for borrowers locked out of debt relief they’re eligible for.”

Then there is the politics. The president is trying to keep a campaign promise – or at least make a feeble attempt at it. In the 2020 presidential election, Biden called for canceling $10,000 in student loan debt for each borrower. The projected tab: more than $400 billion. The administration promised dollars, but it has delivered pennies.

Still, a lot of Americans aren’t persuaded. Those who went into hock to fund their educations complain that any mass loan forgiveness program would not be “fair” to those who paid their own student debt.

I understand the gripe. I borrowed money to go to college and graduate school, and I paid it all back, even though it wasn’t easy. But that’s not why I think it’s a bad idea for the federal government to forgive student loan debt. Why make a free lunch the first lesson that someone learns after graduating from college? That will only cause harm.

At the same time, I’m not persuaded that the strongest argument against paying off student debt is that it’s unfair. So what? JFK was right. Life is unfair. The sooner people accept that fact, the better.

For a moment, I thought: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” I imagined what it would be like to jump on the national victimhood bandwagon.

I made a list of all the various ways in which life has been unfair to me – starting with the fact that I wasn’t born a Kennedy.

After a few minutes, I crumpled up the list. It was a waste of time and energy. Just like our national pastime of whining about unfairness.