A Dear Marine Friend Passes And I Am Very Saddened. Xi Excels, Biden Sucks. Buttons to Pills Art. More.

Another dear, dear friend and Marine Hero passed away today. Lt. Col. Tom Dolson (Ret) died today as a result of falls and Judie, his beautiful wife, called to tell me the sad news.

The Dolson's lived behind us and across the 10th hole at Oakridge.

I came to know Tom because I spent a brief hitch in The Marine Corps and often wished I had stayed. 

Outwardly, Tom would never indicate he was a Marine.  He was handsome and a Marine through and through.  Loved to play poker, was responsible for speakers at the Marine Annual Ball and always embarrassed me by insisting I sit at his table which I always refused. Tom was that kind of guy. Indifferent to what others thought because he was his own man and I deeply treasured our relatonship of some 23 years.

Judie, his beautiful wife, treasured Tom, cared for him and saw that he had every comfort. She was a Delta Stewardess, I believe, and my first employee was Delta's investment baker and I cam to know Delta's founder.  Delta  began as a crop duster from La.  Mr. Collett E. Woolman personally selected and knew every stewardess personally. He had no children. His non-union airline was his family.

SEMPER FI Tom, RIP.  You are sorely missed.

Up to now, Biden's total incompetence has allowed Xi to make a fool of the U.S and Biden and Xi has catapulted himself into a peacemaker while Biden hides in the basement making one stumble after the other.

Kennedy is succinct so no need to continue.

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Biden is either purposely destroying America with insane policies and personal corruption, or is allowing Obama holdover radicals to do so as Trojan Horses  Either way, every institution is under attack, weaponization and intimidation are the weapons of choice and America's future appears bleak.

In the Obama Administration, Democrats wanted to buy votes and the GOP allowed them to do so. Banks made loans to people who had no business buying homes and banks loaned money to those who could not afford to meet their loan obligations. Worthless paper cause banks to collapse, ie. major recession.

Now a bank has made loans to startups and many have nothing behind the deposits by way of value etc. Biden and his appointees started inflation which caused rates to rise and make these  worthless assets more so.  In essence the consequence is that we bailed out China whose start up assets predominated. Kim sets it out see attached.
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Any company that invests under the ESG umbrella should be avoided  for several reasons.

1) You are supporting those who want power over fiduciary responsibility.

2) You are probably helping the Davos men to control your money in ways you would not favor if you understood what they are doing.

3) You are actually paying higher taxes to entities you probably do not support.

4) These Davos men are dangerous if you care about freedom.

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Did ESG Help Sink SVB?
One entrepreneur says the bank was offering ‘basically subprime business loans.’
By Kimberley A. Strassel

If government funds it, they will come. That’s an overlooked story line in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. If Washington wants to point fingers, it should aim the biggest digit at itself.

Let’s talk about what actually imploded over the past week. If the name wasn’t already a giveaway, SVB was the lender of choice for tech dreamers. It claims to have banked nearly half of all U.S. venture-backed tech and healthcare startups. Yet in recent years those clients have skewed ever more in one direction. “We serve those creating positive environmental change,” SVB’s website brags, noting that the bank worked with some 1,550 companies in the “climate technology and sustainability sector.”

Most of these companies weren’t filling some vital market need. Rather, as the Journal reported, SVB was beloved for its willingness to offer “banking services to startups that often weren’t profitable, in some cases didn’t have a product, and would otherwise have a hard time getting a line of credit or a loan from a larger bank.” One tech entrepreneur provided law.com a more scathing description of SVB’s products: “They’re basically subprime business loans. You’re talking about companies that have no credit profile, they’re burning cash and are unlikely to raise the same type of capital because of interest rates. . . . It was basically social credit.”

What inspires a bank to disregard risk and shower money on products or services that nobody is clamoring to buy? One answer is easy money and misguided regulation, which washed dollars into the economy even as it pushed banks like SVB to load up on sovereign debt, lulled by a Federal Reserve-fed belief that interest rates would stay near zero forever. The other? Washington handouts, via President Biden’s effort to engineer a climate industry that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

Congress’s $1.2 trillion 2021 “infrastructure” bill was a starting gun for a clean-tech frenzy. The bill made available hundreds of billions for new “technologies” for electrical grid modification, solar, carbon capture, battery storage, electric-vehicle charging infrastructure, geothermal, “smart community” widgets, microgrids, CO2 transport, hydro, wind, fuel cells, waste management and efficiency gains. Last year’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act threw yet more dollars at would-be green innovators, while also extending billions in household tax credits in an attempt to lure Americans to buy these government-fueled concoctions.

The Biden bills were a supercharged version of Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus, which produced Solyndra’s federal loan guarantees and other green embarrassments. Yet Washington is adept at repeating mistakes. The feds did this time largely off-load responsibility to the state and local authorities or industrial players that apply for grants and pass the money on from there. But the message was still the same: A honey pot of hundreds of billions sits waiting to be taken. Cue the clean-tech scramble.

While the main reason SVB failed was its decision to buy bonds at the top of the market (it got hit when it had to sell), it had also in the past few years further stretched itself by sizably increasing its loans and lines of credit to subprime firms. How much of that would have happened if not for the Biden pot of gold at the end of the green-tech rainbow? A Washington Post story acknowledged that SVB’s weekend collapse initially meant that “many major clean tech companies faced insolvency.” It even accidentally admitted Washington’s role when it noted that many investors were nonetheless hopeful “the infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars in public money” from Washington legislation would “blunt the fallout from the bank collapse.”

The politics doesn’t end there. Even a junior banking regulator should have picked up on SVB’s distress, but that’s apparently a grade above San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly. She and her team have spent more time of late focused on hypothetical climate risk than the real risk of bank failures. What woke overseer wants to clamp down on the darling of clean-tech banking?

And as for that “infusion” of government dollars, it turns out investors don’t have to wait for grant bucks. SVB had relatively few depositors, but most exceeded the federal deposit-insurance limit of $250,000. Had this been a regional bank in Texas specializing in oil and natural-gas ventures, those depositors would surely be out of luck. But the Biden administration immediately swooped in with an SVB bailout, promising to make all those clean-tech companies whole. Subsidy money, a regulatory blind eye, and bailout bucks—talk about a favored industry. This, while most every other company in the country faces a bevy of hostile Biden regulators and lawsuits.

Some Republicans are blaming the SVB meltdown on distraction—claiming the bank was overly focused on turbo funding climate and social-engineering causes. That’s a bit too convenient. SVB and its clients were doing exactly what Washington invited them to do—chase the money. And one big lesson is that no good ever comes from D.C. attempts to micromanage markets.

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The Tyranny of the DEI Bureaucracy
Diversity, equity and inclusion offices become weapons to intimidate and limit speech
By The Editorial Board

Critical race theory is becoming institutionalized across American universities, and a major reason is the educational bureaucracy. Most universities now have offices for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, that exercise a broad writ on campus and act as speech police within the university.

That power was on ugly display last week at Stanford Law School, where a mob of law students shouted down Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan in a spectacle unfit for any institution of higher learning. (Judge Duncan relates his experience nearby.)

Heckling unpopular speakers is common on campus, but what makes this episode stand out is the role played by administrators. As the room grew unruly, Judge Duncan asked that a college official step in. The law school’s associate dean for DEI, Tirien Steinbach, took the podium. “Me and many people in this Administration do absolutely believe in free speech,” the dean said, but then went on to ask if “the juice is worth the squeeze”—that is, whether tolerating free speech is worth the pain it causes.

Ms. Steinbach characterized the judge’s speech as something “that feels abhorrent, that feels harmful, that literally denies the humanity of people.” And she lectured Judge Duncan: “Do you have something so incredible and important to say about Twitter, Guns and Covid that it is worth the division of these people?”

Her remarks were not off-the-cuff. Ms. Steinbach had riled up protesters before the event with an email alerting them that “Numerous senators, advocacy groups, think tanks, and judicial accountability groups” opposed Judge Duncan’s nomination because of his legal advocacy “regarding marriage equality and transgender, voting, reproductive, and immigrants’ rights.”

The federal judge has caused “upset and outrage,” she continued, and has “repeatedly and proudly threatened healthcare and basic rights for marginalized communities, including LGBTQ+ people . . . prisoners, Black voters, and women.”

Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, and Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez later apologized to the judge. But on Monday students lined the halls to protest Ms. Martinez for apologizing. No one expects Ms. Steinbach will face discipline for her role in the fiasco, and the school is still offering her further involvement to help with university healing.

The dean of students emailed the Federalist Society students who had invited Judge Duncan to offer support and counseling—including from Dean Steinbach. The email also encouraged them to “consider pausing their student organization social media accounts until this news cycle winds down” and “try your best not to engage on Twitter.” In other words, respond to an attempt to stifle your speech by stifling your speech.


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The Stanford blowup shows how the culture of DEI, and especially its accumulation of power in the bureaucracy, has become a threat to free speech. Students who gather to jeer disfavored speakers and intimidate and harass fellow students use the authority of DEI offices to sanction their behavior. Rather than promoting diversity, DEI officers enforce ideological conformity.

All of this has understandably produced a political backlash. Texas lawmakers this month introduced a bill to eliminate DEI offices on public university campuses, except those working solely to ensure compliance with state and federal anti-discrimination law.

The bill also seeks to remove the ideological loyalty oaths that many schools now demand of faculty. A similar policy recently passed at the University of North Carolina. The Texas bill says universities should also incorporate into their bylaws the University of Chicago’s principles on freedom of expression.

We can hope this helps in Texas, but the tyranny of DEI has spread across far too many American institutions. The DEI movement may have started with good intentions, but across government, education and American business its functionaries have too often become ideological enforcers.

DEI officials have a vested interest in ensuring that the grievances of identity politics continue lest the offices have no reason to exist. As the Stanford experience shows, they promote racial division rather than redress it, and institutions need to rethink their value.

And:

My Struggle Session at Stanford Law School

A dean voices pride that students are being taught to stage tantrums rather than make a reasoned case.

By Stuart Kyle Duncan

Stanford Law School’s website touts its “collegial culture” in which “collaboration and the open exchange of ideas are essential to life and learning.” Then there’s the culture I experienced when I visited Stanford last week. I had been invited by the student chapter of the Federalist Society to discuss the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on which I’ve served since 2018. I’ve spoken at law schools across the country, and I was glad to accept this invitation. One of my first clerks graduated from Stanford. I have friends on the faculty. I gave a talk there a few years ago and found it a warm and engaging place, but not this time.

When I arrived, the walls were festooned with posters denouncing me for crimes against women, gays, blacks and “trans people.” Plastered everywhere were photos of the students who had invited me and fliers declaring “You should be ASHAMED,” with the last word in large red capital letters and a horror-movie font. This didn’t seem “collegial.” Walking to the building where I would deliver my talk, I could hear loud chanting a good 50 yards away, reminiscent of a tent revival in its intensity. Some 100 students were massed outside the classroom as I entered, faces painted every color of the rainbow, waving signs and banners, jeering and stamping and howling. As I entered the classroom, one protester screamed: “We hope your daughters get raped!”

I had been warned a few days before about a possible protest. But Stanford administrators assured me they were “on top of it,” that Stanford’s policies permitted “protest but not disruption.” They weren’t “on top of it.” Before my talk started, the mob flooded the room. Banners unfurled. Signs brandished: “FED SUCK,” “Trans Lives Matter” (this one upside down), and others that can’t be quoted in a family newspaper. A nervous dog—literally, a canine—was in the front row, fur striped with paint. A man with a frozen smile approached me, identified himself as the “dean of student engagement,” and asked, “You doing OK?” I don’t remember what I said.

The protesters weren’t upset by the subject of my talk—a rather dry discourse on how circuit courts interact with the Supreme Court in times of doctrinal flux. Rather, I was their target. While in practice, I represented clients and advanced arguments the protesters hate—for instance, I defended Louisiana’s traditional marriage laws. As for my judicial decisions, among the several hundred I’ve written, the protesters were especially vexed by U.S. v. Varner. A federal prisoner serving a term for attempted receipt of child pornography (and with a previous state conviction for possession of child porn) petitioned our court to order that he be called by feminine pronouns. As my opinion explained, federal courts can’t control what pronouns people use. The Stanford protesters saw it differently: My opinion had “denied a transwoman’s existence.”

When the Federalist Society president tried to introduce me, the heckling began. “The Federalist Society (You suck!) is pleased to welcome Judge Kyle Duncan(You’re not welcome here, we hate you!). . . . He was appointed by President Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (Embarrassing!).” And so on. As I began, the heckling continued. Try delivering a speech while being jeered at every third word. This was an utter farce, a staged public shaming. I stopped, pleaded with the students to stop the stream of insults (which only made them louder), and asked if administrators were present.

Enter Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion. Ms. Steinbach and (I later learned) other administrators were watching from the periphery. She hadn’t introduced herself to me. She asked to address the students.

Something felt off. I asked her to tell the students their infantile behavior was inappropriate. She insisted she wanted to talk to all of us. Students began screaming, and I reluctantly gave way. Whereupon Ms. Steinbach opened a folio, took out a printed sheaf of papers, and delivered a six-minute speech addressing the question: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

What could that mean? While the students rhythmically snapped, Ms. Steinbach attempted to explain. My “work,” she said, “has caused harm.” It “feels abhorrent” and “literally denies the humanity of people.” My presence put Ms. Steinbach in a tough spot, she said, because her job “is to create a space of belonging for all people” at Stanford. She assured me I was “absolutely welcome in this space” because “me and many people in this administration do absolutely believe in free speech.” I didn’t feel welcome—who would? And she repeated the cryptic question: “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”

I asked again what she meant, and she finally put the question plainly: Was my talk “worth the pain that this causes and the division that this causes?” Again she asserted her belief in free speech before equivocating: “I understand why people feel like the harm is so great that we might need to reconsider those policies, and luckily, they’re in a school where they can learn the advocacy skills to advocate for those changes.” Then she turned the floor back over to me, while hoping I could “learn too” and “listen through your partisan lens, the hyperpolitical lens.” In closing, she said: “I look out and I don’t ask, ‘What’s going on here?’ I look out and I say, ‘I’m glad this is going on here.’ ” This is on video, and the entire event is on audio, in case you’re wondering.

The mob’s leader, a young woman, then addressed the crowd: “I want to ask that half the folks walk out in protest and the rest of us, let’s tone down the heckling slightly so that he can get to our questions.” I didn’t see how I could continue, so after the partial walkout, I dispensed with my prepared remarks and opened the floor. That went poorly, and the plainly hostile questions were the least of it. Students hurled abuse, including vile sexual innuendo; some filed past me spitting insults (“You’re scum!”). Two U.S. Marshals decided it was time to escort me out.

Two days later, Jenny Martinez and Marc Tessier-Lavinge, respectively the law school’s dean and the university’s president, formally apologized, confirming that protesters and administrators had violated Stanford policy. I’m grateful and I accepted. The matter hasn’t dropped, though. This week, nearly one-third of Stanford law students continued the protest—donning masks, wearing black, and forming a “human corridor” inside the school. They weren’t protesting me; I’m long gone. They were protesting Ms. Martinez for having apologized to me.

The most disturbing aspect of this shameful debacle is what it says about the state of legal education. Stanford is an elite law school. The protesters showed not the foggiest grasp of the basic concepts of legal discourse: That one must meet reason with reason, not power. That jeering contempt is the opposite of persuasion. That the law protects the speaker from the mob, not the mob from the speaker. Worst of all, Ms. Steinbach’s remarks made clear she is proud that Stanford students are being taught this is the way law should be.

I have been criticized in the media for getting angry at the protesters. It’s true I called them “appalling idiots,” “bullies” and “hypocrites.” They are, and I won’t apologize for saying so. Sometimes anger is the proper response to vicious behavior.

Judge Duncan serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

And:

Biden’s First Veto Blocks Anti-ESG Bill

President Joe Biden signed the first veto of his presidency, blocking a bipartisan bill that would have prohibited pension fund managers from considering environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) issues when investing.

“President Biden’s first veto is against a bipartisan bill that protects retirement savings from political interference,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said in a statement.

“It is clear that President Biden wants Wall Street to use your hard-earned money not to grow your savings, but to fund a far-left political agenda. That will hurt seniors and workers, especially after President Biden’s reckless spending caused record inflation and rapid interest rate hikes,” he added.

The legislation passed the Senate 50-46, with Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Jon Tester (D-MT) joining Republicans.

Manchin criticized Biden’s decision to veto the bill, accusing his administration of prioritizing a “radical policy agenda.”

“This Administration continues to prioritize their radical policy agenda over the economic, energy, and national security needs of our country, and it is absolutely infuriating,” he said.

Republicans have referred to ESG investing as “woke investing” or “woke capitalism.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced an 18-state coalition to “push back against President Biden’s environmental, social, corporate governance agenda that is destabilizing the American economy and global financial system.”

“We as freedom-loving states can work together and leverage our state pension funds to force change in how major asset managers invest the money of hardworking Americans, ensuring corporations are focused on maximizing shareholder value, rather than the proliferation of woke ideology,” a joint statement from the 18 states said.

According to Investopedia, ESG factors include supporting LGBTQ+ rights, embracing “diversity” among board members, and establishing policies to combat climate change.

Biden described his reasoning for vetoing the bill by referencing “MAGA House Republicans,” specifically Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who supported the bill.

The White House previously said Biden would veto the legislation if it passed in Congress.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized the anti-ESG bill, saying it would “jeopardize the retirement and life savings for police officers, firefighters, teachers, and tens of millions [of] retirees all across the country.”

Pierre noted Biden would veto the legislation, saying that he is “focused” on protecting the life-savings of workers in the U.S.

https://www.youtube.com/live/m0rZhwFn2Hc?feature=share

Biden’s first veto came 789 days after he took office, five days longer than former President Donald Trump and nearly 500 days longer than former President Barrack Obama

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Bibi won and is now paying the price because Israel has no constitution and needs one and everyone  believes they can express their 2 Cents when it comes to Israel.

By winning, Bibi is being dragged to the far left and Herzog is trying to stabilize the situation.  As I noted in a previous memo BIBI is up against class one liberals.

Netanyahu’s Judicial-Reform Blunder

Facing discord, the Israeli government should step back and make room for compromise.

By William A. Galston

Whatever one thinks of the judicial reforms that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition has proposed, it’s hard not to conclude that he is proceeding in a reckless and destructive manner. He has divided his country and driven many of its citizens to protest in the streets. He has lost the confidence of Israel’s economic leaders and has led many members of the country’s defense forces to question his government’s orders. Members of his own Likud Party are signaling that he is going too far, too fast.

Mr. Netanyahu also has driven a wedge between Israel and a growing majority of American Jews. The Jewish Federation of North America sent him a letter last month opposing major portions of his proposed legislation and urging compromise. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has given Mr. Netanyahu a hero’s welcome in the past, has fallen silent.

“Great innovations should not be forced on a slender majority,” Thomas Jefferson advised. It isn’t even clear that Israel’s prime minister entered office with majority support. Yes, his coalition controls 64 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel’s parliament, but it represents only 48.4% of the votes cast in last year’s election, while the opposition parties received slightly more—48.9%.

Nor do his sweeping judicial changes reflect the will of the people. A survey conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute found that a majority of voters—including substantial minorities of coalition supporters—oppose each of the government’s main judicial proposals. Sixty-three percent of Israelis favor the current method of selecting judges rather than the government’s proposed political takeover of the process. According to the IDI, a majority of Israelis fear a range of negative consequences, including “damage to their personal savings, restrictions on freedom of expression, exposing IDF soldiers to international war crimes charges, [and] politicization of the civil service.” Mr. Netanyahu, who as finance minister helped create Israel’s dynamic economy, has assured his people that his judicial plan will not harm the economy, but only 35% believe him.

Tellingly, 70% of Israelis—including 60% of the coalition’s own voters—favor negotiations between the government and the opposition to find common ground. In a series of speeches, President Isaac Herzog has done his best to jump-start such a process. After consulting leaders across the political spectrum, he proposed a framework for compromise, which key opposition leaders accepted as a basis for negotiations. But Mr. Netanyahu turned it down flatly, reportedly because his hard-line justice minister, Yariv Levin, threatened to resign and bring down the coalition if the prime minister opened the door to talks.

The stakes of this conflict are very high. Israel’s declaration of independence, which established the state, promises to ensure “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race, or sex” and to guarantee “freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture.”

These commitments distinguish a liberal democracy from pure majoritarianism, which can run roughshod over the rights of individuals and minorities. But they are not self-executing. America’s founders understood that without institutional support, verbal guarantees—whether the separation of powers or a bill of rights—would be, in the words of James Madison, mere “parchment barriers.”

As a parliamentary democracy with a one-chamber legislature, Israel has fewer checks and balances than the U.S., and Israel’s Supreme Court emerged as the principal barrier against the tyranny of the majority. Over time, however, the court expanded its jurisdiction and asserted a broad right of judicial review, which its critics saw as a power grab. And as Israel’s electorate came to reflect the increasing influence of religious Jews and immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, the Supreme Court came to be seen as a bastion of secular European elites, who use the institution to enforce their views on Israeli society and politics.

With the announcement of the government’s reform proposals, these longstanding tensions have exploded into one of the most divisive confrontations in Israel’s history. The current moment is the coalition’s best chance to redress what it sees as decades of judicial usurpation. For the opposition, this effort represents a mortal threat to its version of a just and inclusive society governed by Israel’s founding ideals. The opposition believes it could lose everything if its resistance to these reforms fails.

While the government’s proposals are deeply flawed, the status quo is far from perfect. The court’s jurisdiction has expanded into what are clearly political issues, the requirements for bringing a case before the court are too permissive, and key criteria that the court uses to settle cases are subjective at best. There is room for an honorable compromise.

The government has recently offered to pause some parts of its legislation while proceeding with its plan to take over the judicial selection process. This is a start, but it’s not enough. Mr. Netanyahu should freeze the entire legislative process to make space for negotiations, which are the only alternative to unending discord.

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