public charter schools do better at teaching. But my guess is that the people who go to a public charter school have parents who are making sure that everything works out. If you had to guess, would the parents of the kids who got into the public charter schools be more supportive of good education than the average of everybody else? Probably not even close. I mean, if you are going to go through whatever hoops you have to jump through to get your kid into a special school, you have already decided that your kid can handle that school, which is the first filter that makes this data ridiculous. So I do not believe that this proves that the public charter schools are better schools. It might only prove that the people who really value education and their parents put an effort behind it as well, they just do better of course. So I am not sure they proved anything. I do not believe any data. All public data is questionable.

Speaking of which, there was an article in Politico recently that claimed that the savings being claimed by DOGE are overstated. And that the reason that DOGE overstated the savings is that they looked at the contracts and they said we are saving the part that is the cap. Now, a contract apparently has a cap as in it might cost this, but under no circumstance will it cost more than this higher number. And so Politico said you cannot just take the highest number and say that was your savings. And DOGE answered back on social media on X. They answered back and said, in the real world, if you have a contract with the government and it says what is the most you can spend, you will spend that amount. It is not really theoretical. You will actually spend as much as you are allowed to spend, even if you have to rush and waste some money at the end. And then they gave some statistics to prove their point. So Politico was unable to do the math right to figure out what the real savings are. And once again, have I mentioned that any data or statistics you see in the public domain are probably fake. Probably fake. So I do not believe the school data and I do not believe the DOGE data and I do not believe Politico’s take on the data. What I believe is that anybody can make the data do anything they want.

Well, Newsom continues to mock the style of Trump’s posting and it is succeeding and failing at the same time in a way that I find fascinating. It is succeeding in the sense that whoever writes them, which I doubt it is Newsom himself, is doing a really pretty good job of doing a humorous take on Trump’s social media style. However, Trump’s social media style is the most successful social media style we have ever seen in the history of social media. So instead of making Trump look like a dope, when they accurately copy it, you know, the style, it makes it remind me how good he is. I do not know what it is supposed to be doing. It is supposed to be mocking him and making him look dumb or bad. But the fact is that when they copy his technique, it is a much better and interesting social media post than when they do not copy his technique. All they are really doing is proving that he can communicate better than anybody who has ever done this. Like by far, I mean, there is nobody in Trump’s class when it comes to communicating on social media. Nobody close. Although Musk is really good, but Trump is still next level above that. So that part is funny. They are doing a great job at a thing that does not work. That is so Democrat, is it not? They finally found something that they could do well, which is mocking his style, but it just does not matter. It will not make a dent in anything. Do they not know that? Oh well.

Well, while Newsom is doing this very clever mocking of social media, the only reason he is so good at it is that he has time left over because he has already solved all of California’s biggest problems, right? The reason he has time to make fun of Trump is he has really taken care of everything. I mean, our state, California, wow, it is working so well. No. Well, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, California has the highest unemployment in the whole country, 5.5 percent. It is the worst in the US. Great. The worst in the US. But it is not like other states are also having problems, right? It is not like California is the one place where they are having problems. Let us check in Texas for example. Oh, Texas broke job records again and by outpacing the national growth rate. They broke job records in July and again outpaced. They have got a 4.2 percent unemployment which is lower than the national rate of 4.2 percent. All right. Maybe they got lucky. Maybe Texas got lucky.

Trump is also speaking out. I guess he did an interview with author Alex Marlow and he said Trump said that he thinks that the judge shopping, which is what Democrats do, is the most destructive tactic in the left’s lawfare playbook. Well, so you know what I am talking about, right? So the Democrats figured out that they could just shop around for whatever judge was most likely to agree with Democrats and then have that one judge, no matter where they were, supposedly their domain was, and have them do rulings that affected the entire country. So in effect, they could get any legal outcome they wanted by just making sure that they chose the right judge that would give them what they wanted. Now, if that is not authoritarianism, I do not know what is because it is not democracy, is it? It is literally a small group of people using the system. And Alex Marlow points out that the tactic of doing that may have come from Marc Elias. He is sort of the evil genius attorney for the Democrats. And wow. I mean it is a clever tactic. So I appreciate it in just how effective it is. But how can you complain that Trump is a threat to democracy when you judge shop? How in the world is anything that Trump has done ever in the same class, I mean, unless you believe January 6 was an insurrection, which it was not, there is nothing he has ever done that was as authoritarian and destructive to democracy and our system as the judge shopping. That is literally the worst thing I have ever seen. I do not know, maybe the gerrymandering is just as bad, but at least both sides do it. That feels different because it is being done by both sides. The judge shopping thing feels like that is just Democrats, right? So that does feel like a tyranny to me.

So I guess Zelensky is in town in Washington and Trump wants Putin and Zelensky to meet as soon as Friday. But before that today, probably already happening, several European leaders meeting with Trump and separately, I think they are going to meet with Zelensky and Zelensky is going to meet with Trump and blah blah blah. And the head of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen. I feel like you have to say it that way. You cannot just say Ursula von der Leyen. You have to say Ursula von der Leyen. I know. Sounds like some danger is coming. Said she welcomes Trump’s what she called Article 5-like security guarantees. So I guess on the table but not decided is that the US and maybe presumably Europe would guarantee the security of what is left of Ukraine but would not include them in NATO but it would be Article 5-like. So in other words it would be NATO-ish but they would not call it NATO and they would not make Ukraine pay dues into it. But we would still be obligated to defend them if Russia went in or somebody else. Just Russia. Probably just Russia. Well, so that is one thing. I do not know if Putin is going to say yes to an almost NATO, NATO-ish, NATO-like thing when his problem is NATO. How in the world is he going to say yes to that? Does not feel like a yes to me.

And then Trump was complaining that Democrats and pundits were saying that Putin won the Alaska trip, you know, over Trump because it happened in Alaska and it made it look like, I do not know, it gave status or something to Putin that we would allow him into the country. I guess that was the argument. But Trump argues that getting him to come to Alaska was actually a major point of contention and he did not want to. So it is not like it was Putin’s idea to come to Alaska. But to me, what it looks like is that if you are the one who gets the other one to come to your territory, then you are the boss and you are the king and you own the castle and your underling came to you, right? Would not you just automatically believe that the person who stays home, you know, I am calling Alaska home for Trump, the one who stays home is the one in charge, right? Because if you are going to meet somebody and you have not established yet who is in charge, do not you meet in some neutral place that neither of you have any sway over? But the fact that Putin went to Trump’s house essentially, meaning the US, to me that looks like Trump had the upper hand. And that Putin was so