Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Everybody saw this coming.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

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Reader Interactions

104Comments

  3. 3.

    West of the Rockies

    I’m really looking forward to this!  My daughter just moved to Eugene to establish residency to attend UofO.

  4. 4.

    Another Scott

    +1

    Looking forward to it.

    In other news, AlJazeera:

    Administration officials said Biden’s executive order, to be signed at 4:45pm (17:45 GMT) in Washington, DC on Wednesday, will launch an immediate 100-day review of supply chains for four critical products: semiconductor chips, large-capacity batteries for electric vehicles, rare earth minerals and pharmaceuticals.

    The order will also direct six sector reviews, modelled after the process used by the US Department of Defence to strengthen the defence industrial base. It will be focused on the areas of defence, public health, communications technology, transportation, energy and food production.

    The US has been besieged by supply shortages since the onset of the pandemic, which squeezed the availability of masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment, hurting front-line workers.

    The chip shortage, which in some cases is forcing automakers to take employees off production lines, is the latest example of supply bottlenecks hurting American workers.

    “Make no mistake, we’re not simply planning to order up reports. We are planning to take actions to close gaps as we identify them,” the administration official added.

    The government can act to address actual problems when led by people who actually want it to be responsive. Whodathunkit??

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  9. 9.

    Starfish

    A high school senior who is looking into pre-law or criminology is asking me about scholarship resources for Black students who would be the first to go to college in their family. I feel like there should be good resources for this, but I do not know what the current ones are. If you have any advice on this, I would appreciate it.

  11. 11.

    Another Scott

    ScienceMag:

    Researchers once thought humans initially entered the Americas about 12,000 years ago. That’s when thick glaciers that covered much of North America began to melt. This opened a corridor, which allowed people to trek from Siberia across now-submerged land in the Bering Sea, and then into North America on the hunt for mammoth and other big game.

    But over the past decade, archaeologists have shown people might have begun to move into North America much earlier. To get around the glaciers, they would have island hopped by boat and walked along shorelines exposed by low sea levels. They traveled from Siberia through the Alaskan archipelago about 16,000 years ago, eventually making their way down the Pacific coast.

    The sliver of dog bone supports this hypothesis. Recovered from among more than 50,000 prehistoric animal and human remains excavated near Wrangel Island, researchers didn’t realize it came from a dog until they analyzed its DNA. “We started out thinking this was just another bear bone,” says team leader Charlotte Lindqvist, a biologist at the University at Buffalo (UB). “When we went deeper, we found out it was from a dog.”

    The bone is about 10,200 years old, making its owner the oldest dog known in the Americas, the scientists report today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. (The previous record holders were two 10,000-year-old dogs unearthed in the U.S. Midwest.) And the dog’s DNA holds clues to an even earlier time.

    The pup’s genome revealed it was closely related to the first known dogs, which researchers think were domesticated in Siberia about 23,000 years ago. Based on the number of genetic differences between the Alaskan dog and its Siberian ancestors, the team estimates the two populations split 16,700 years ago, plus or minus a few thousand years.

    That’s a clue that dogs—and their humans—left Siberia and entered the Americas thousands of years before North America’s glaciers melted. “Here we have the genetic evidence, if not the physical evidence, [showing] dogs were already in the Americas with humans 16,000 years ago,” says Durham University archaeologist Angela Perri, who was not part of the team.

    The dates also line up with DNA-based estimates for when modern Native Americans split off from ancestors in Siberia, providing another line of evidence to pin down when the first migrations happened. “Understanding how the dogs moved also shows you how the humans moved,” says Flavio Augusto da Silva Coelho, a graduate student at UB who did the DNA and other analyses.

    Makes sense to me, unlike the earlier picture that people zoomed from Alaska to South America as soon as the glaciers retreated… I suspect we’ll find things go back even further as they get even more clever about analyzing old things.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    @West of the Rockies:

    “How do you know she’s a witch?”

    “She weighs the same as a Duck.”

    You should be able to get some mileage out of the bit. Hope her scheme works out–Eugene is a nice spot, and track and field mecca for the US.

  13. 13.

    SFBayAreaGal

    Looking forward to geg6 post.

    Today I’m 65. My local VA Medical Center said to wait the day after my birthday to schedule my Covid-19 shot. Who would have thought at 65 and being out of the service that I’m excited about getting a shot.

  14. 14.

    DropDminus

    @West of the Rockies:  I miss Eugene. It’s been 20 years since we headed back east to western PA and I still think about how amazing it was to just hop in the car and be in the cascades or at the pacific coast in about an hour.  This was going to be the year we took the kids out to see the place…damnit.

  16. 16.

    gwangung

    @Starfish: There ARE first generation support, it’s a growing emphasis of support on college campuses, and it’s popular for donors to give to.

    I don’t know of external sources, but individual schools (particularly larger universities) have lots of them (I know my employer, University of Washington, has ’em, and I’m asked a lot to identify donors to give to them).

  18. 18.

    Leto

    @SFBayAreaGal: About three weeks ago the VA facility, in my region, sent out a text to everyone saying that we could sign up to get a Covid shot. So I went through the automated process, selected a date, and was pretty happy with it. A week later I get woken up at 7am with a phone call from a VA worker saying those text messages were sent in error to the wrong age group, so my appointment was canceled. Oh well. I guess I get to wait a bit longer.

  21. 21.

    lowtechcyclist

    My son will be in the high school class of 2025, so you bet I’m looking forward to what geg6 can tell us.  The landscape, and the costs, have changed so enormously since I was in college 45 years ago.

  23. 23.

    Kent

    Looking forward to what geg6 has to say.

    My own daughter is a HS senior.  We visited and explored about 20 schools on the west coast and she ended up applying to 10 of them.  Now we have merit and financial aid information from 9 of the 10 schools so we have some real world numbers to look at.  The spread is about $60,000/year from least to most expensive.  Pretty eye-opening.

  25. 25.

    debbie

    @Kent:

    I remember back to what my education cost ($3,000 per year (supplies not included) at a top-level art school), and I practically faint at these ginormous numbers. Good luck!

  27. 27.

    MomSense

    Youngest is a junior in HS and putting together a list of schools we can hopefully visit this summer.

  29. 29.

    geg6

    I will be available to answer questions in the comments, so make sure to get you questions ready for me tomorrow!

    One caveat would be that I can’t give individual estimates of any kind of aid because I don’t want anyone to have their privacy invaded and I can’t really estimate anything from your income.  I would need a lot more info, which the FAFSA collects, to do that.  So wording the questions in general terms is best.  Also, any VA educational benefits are also within my area of expertise, so ask away about those, too.

  30. 30.

    Cermet

    @Another Scott: This means little; lets be honest, price is what drives this and unless we decide to pay thru the noise or have monster subsidies, these items can’t be produced here. The fact is, we could produce vast amounts of the so-called “rare earths” which are essential (we have huge desposites) but instead, China does because they can do it eaily for less than half our production costs. So, unlike lithium (for batteries) here we have an advanatage (China has far fewer rare earths) we still can’t compete.

    This is a total, 110% waste of effort; a paper will be produced saying we could and companies will say we need to (end users) but no way in hell we’ll pay for the ability at double or more the cost.

    This is a sad joke.

  33. 33.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    Makes sense to me, unlike the earlier picture that people zoomed from Alaska to South America as soon as the glaciers retreated… I suspect we’ll find things go back even further as they get even more clever about analyzing old things.

    I recall reading something a few years ago that a group of humans kinda hung around in the Alaska adjacent area for a few thousand years before continuing on into North America. The area was relatively temperate and there was plenty of game.  Also, maybe some evidence of multiple migration paths into the Americas.

    The issue of evolution of dogs had raised some past controversy, but it is becoming clear that the early aboriginal Americans had canine companions for a long time.

  34. 34.

    Benw

    @geg6: looking forward to your informed post! But I read a tweet the other day by this guy that was all like this loan forgiveness is such BS, so be ready to address that! :)

  35. 35.

    JanieM

    @Starfish:

    @gwangung:

    This isn’t about scholarships per se, but Bates College in Maine has a program for students who are the first in their families to go to college.  I could have used such a program when I started college, in fact. Also, last I knew Bates had a pretty robust scholarship program in general, but I’m at least a decade out of touch.

    @debbie: $3000 a year was about the annual budget when I started college too (1968). I remember the tuition riot in response to the following year’s increase: “Twenty-two-fifty is too damned much!”

  36. 36.

    Cermet

    @Kent: But that is offical cost – the real cost may be far lower. My daughter’s school (MIT) was $60 k/yr but the real cost for her was about $8-9 K/yr. A rather big difference – yes, private schools work very differently than public ( no reduced tution.) I was far from poor and owned my home clear; making well over $75 K/yr and they still considered me “poor”. Don’t overlook these well endowed schools!

  40. 40.

    MisterForkbeard

    Bleah. I had a comment on Reddit blow up because I explained why having a source code breach could cause a month or two of delays for a large (game) patch.

    Got a silver medal, a couple thousand upvotes, 30 or so direct comments and a bunch of direct messages from folks who think that this is probably as simple as restoring a backup. Sigh. And one or two people who are incensed because I noted that one person who claimed “IT and programmers have nothing to do with each” probably didn’t work in the field before I politely explained just a few of the intersections and why IT and DevOps can cause huge problems for Dev/QA/Deployment.

    ETA: One of the guys who went after me for the “I don’t think you work in the industry” comment got particularly upset because he claimed it was demeaning and then unironically accused me of being an early-stage engineer with self-confidence problems and a severe case of dunning kruger, and then told me I was being dismissive and not persuasive.

    TechBros are idiots. Sigh.

  41. 41.

    Josie

    Looking forward to the post. My kids are already past this stage, but I think it is vitally important to the future of the country.​
      ETA: It was a day for celebration when we finally paid off Northwestern in the mid 2000’s. I can’t imagine what the costs would be today.

  43. 43.

    JML

    I will admit, I find the student debt discussion to be woefully simplistic. I strongly support debt relief (no benefit to me; I’m paid off on college & law school) but I’m not wild about the pure “wipe it all out” push.

    there are still states where they have tried to keep tuition costs down at the public institutions with investment from the state, but there are tons that have not. Should the states who have dumped all the cost on the student be rewarded for their terrible behavior over the last 30 years? And it makes me damn grouchy as someone who has supported public higher education forever to see private school educations reaping the benefits as well, especially those rapacious for-profit “colleges” many of whom robbed students blind, targeting veterans for the GI Bill money with “law enforcement” degrees that weren’t worth the paper they were printed on when those folks tried to get a job.

  44. 44.

    PJ

    @Cermet: The problem with high official tuition costs and undisclosed tuition discounts is that they deter students from low or middle income families or from families that have never had anyone attend college or fill out a FAFSA form.  If you do not have a competent guidance counselor to explain these things (and I suspect that many, like the one in my high school, are incompetent), you will never know that the actual cost of tuition may be far lower than the sticker price.

  45. 45.

    J R in WV

    @Cermet: ​

     

    @Another Scott: This means little; lets be honest, price is what drives this and unless we decide to pay thru the noise or have monster subsidies, these items can’t be produced here.
    …
    This is a total, 110% waste of effort; a paper will be produced saying we could and companies will say we need to (end users) but no way in hell we’ll pay for the ability at double or more the cost.

    This is a sad joke.

    Pretty definitive of you, given that no research has been done yet to cost out the options. Perhaps security requirements will show that some of the trillions of $$ going to defense industries should be relocated to fund production of these necessary types of products.

    Who knows so far? IT is possible for the government to buy stuff and to require it to be produced here at home, after all. I think there may be room for improvement on many of these product groups.

    Also, pretty pessimistic on your part, are you OK? Or is this normal for you? “Sad Joke”…

  52. 52.

    CatFacts

    @Starfish: The McNair Scholars program has more of a focus on preparing undergrads for grad school, but it is geared toward Black students who are the first in their families to go to college. It may be worth a shot.

  55. 55.

    trollhattan

    @Kent: ​
    Class of 2021 is probably getting a worse deal than 2020 due to Covid, which was no picnic but applications were in by the time lockdown hit.

    The good news: I think classes will be in person again by fall and perhaps dorms will be at full occupancy. They’ll be colliding with all the gap year kids and I don’t know how schools will be managing that.

    Best wishes to your kid!

  56. 56.

    Dan B

    @DropDminus: Eugene area is great for growing things.  The summers are warm but rarely scorching.  The winters touch freezing very seldom. And the soil is amazing thanks to the Ice Age Missoula floods which scoured thousands of square miles of eastern WA and dumped it from Portland to Eugene due to hydraulic backup at the sharp north bend of the Columbia.  One nursery a mile east of Eugene,Gossler Farms, bowled over a noted garden writer by plunging a steel rod five feet in the soft topsoil with one arm.  Good stuff!

  57. 57.

    rikyrah

    ????

    Responding to reports that US Capitol Insurrectionists had floor plans of complex on Jan. 6.Architect of Capitol acknowledges floor plans are kept on secured server, but hard copies are distributed to House members who request or need it— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) February 24, 2021

  58. 58.

    Kent

    @Cermet: @Kent: But that is offical cost – the real cost may be far lower. My daughter’s school (MIT) was $60 k/yr but the real cost for her was about $8-9 K/yr. A rather big difference – yes, private schools work very differently than public ( no reduced tution.) I was far from poor and owned my home clear; making well over $75 K/yr and they still considered me “poor”. Don’t overlook these well endowed schools!

    No, those are real costs, not sticker prices or whatever.

    We have the actual costs and the actual merit aid and financial aid awards in hand so we can do an actual apples to apples cross comparison of all 10 schools to which she applied.  Our out of pocket annual costs range from about $18,300 at Western Washington University to $75,600 at Reed College.

  59. 59.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Old School:

    I remember reading about that here last year.

    Don’t understand the reasoning of the Representative who introduced the articles of impeachment against the SD AG:

    “This is not political and it is not personal,” Rep. Will Mortensen said when he filed the articles. “I do not believe Attorney General Ravnsborg belongs in prison, but I know he does not belong in the Office of the Attorney General anymore.”

    Why doesn’t he belong in prison? He struck a man with his vehicle

  61. 61.

    geg6

    @WaterGirl: ​
     
    People can do that and I’ll try to get to them this evening so I can answer those in the first few comments on tomorrow’s post.

  62. 62.

    debbie

    @JanieM:

    Heh. I remember my mother bemoaning art school being so expensive. One of my brothers was attending OSU and back then, instate tuition was only three figures per semester.  ?

  66. 66.

    Central Planning

    My daughter is looking at colleges in England. She would be a transfer student. Most of the universities over there look to be around 12k pounds for tuition only. Add room and board for another 9k pounds and you’re at like $30k USD/year.
    That’s a lot more reasonable (and probably a much different experience) than college in the US. Her freshman year, tuition-only list price was $25k PER SEMESTER.

  68. 68.

    dmsilev

    Some good news (via the Post):

    President Biden will nominate a former U.S. Postal Service executive, a leading voting-rights advocate and a former postal union leader to the mail service’s governing board, according to three people briefed on the nominees, a move that will reshape the agency’s leadership and increase pressure on the embattled postmaster general.

    Biden will nominate Ron Stroman, the Postal Service’s recently retired deputy postmaster general; Amber McReynolds, the chief executive of National Vote at Home Institute; and Anton Hajjar, the former general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy.

    If confirmed, the nominees would give Democrats a majority on the nine-member board of governors, with potentially enough votes to oust DeJoy, who testified Wednesday before a House panel that his new strategic plan for the mail service included slowing deliveries.

  69. 69.

    Kent

    @Raven:@Kent: how you doing?

    Pretty good.  Surgery was a month ago now.  I’m probably back to about 90% in terms of energy level and activity.  I basically feel fine.  Putting in between 5,000 and 10,000 steps per day in our very hilly neighborhood and such.  All my labs and vitals look good so all the doctors are happy. But it is really a long haul to get 100% back from major open heart surgery like that.   I’m still on restricted activities in terms of lifting stuff.  Probably for another month.

  70. 70.

    geg6

    @Starfish: ​
     
    Best steps to take:
    1) Talk to high school guidance office. Most high schools have lists of local scholarships, often from grads of that school, which are strictly for those students and are much easier to get than anything you will find on the state, regional or national level. Much, much, much easier.

    2) You may also try local civic orgs like the Rotary, Lions Clubs, etc. (locally in my area, Wolves Clubs seem to have endless scholarship funds and love to target low income, first generation students of all races) and local churches. Many Black churches have robust scholarship programs. At least, all of this is true here in PA.

    3) If the student has chosen a school, contact the Financial Aid Office at the school. They may have grants/scholarships specifically targeted to that population. At my University and my campus, we have several scholarship programs (Bunton Waller Scholarships/Fellowships, University Trustee Scholarships, Academic Grant Program, and many, many endowed scholarships that are for students who are low income and/or first generation). Sometimes just giving a call can get some extra funding for these students.
    4) Check your state higher education department website to see if they have special programs. PA has several special programs for student beyond our PA State Grant program which are for different categories of students, such as first generation, foster care, certain majors, etc.
    5) Every student should register with one of the big national scholarship search engines. I personally like http://www.fastweb.com. The student creates a profile, providing as much detail as possible, and the site does the search based on the student profile. The student will receive emails and alerts when there are scholarships that match their profile. These sites not only provide national scholarships but most state, regional and even some high school specific ones.

    And now I can just cut and paste this reply tomorrow. ;-)

  71. 71.

    Kent

    @Raven:@Kent: my niece looked at Reed, she’s a Banana Slug now.

    I’m a Reed grad but that was a different era.  Over 50% of their students are on full-pay.  Parents who basically just write $76,000 checks every year.  That isn’t going to be us.  We want to retire some day.

    Nothing wrong with Santa Cruz.  It’s a great school, especially if you are in-state.

  72. 72.

    Mike in NC

    Neighbor tipped us off yesterday that they were scheduling vaccine appointments at the local community college. I went online and scheduled mine, and got it today. Will go back in a month for #2 shot. The National Guard folks and a team of nurses did an amazing job registering and processing everybody.

  75. 75.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @dmsilev: 
    I don’t understand (well, I do, but still) why DeJoy won’t just resign. Lots of people hate his guts and want him gone.

  79. 79.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I don’t understand (well, I do, but still) why DeJoy won’t just resign. Lots of people hate his guts and want him gone.

    He seems to be determined to cause as much damage as he can before he leaves. This is sad, and I wonder if Biden or the Congress can stop him from doing too much harm.

  82. 82.

    geg6

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    That’s great.  Now he needs to get over Neera Tanden calling his daughter all the totally deserved names she called her for being responsible for increasing the price of Epipens to a rate no one but she could afford.

    Joe needs to take him out behind the woodshed.

  83. 83.

    Served

    @Cheryl Rofer: That first paragraph is so self-important and haughty. Everyone must live up to Joe Manchin’s personal standard of “bipartisan.” Give me a break.

  85. 85.

    MisterForkbeard

    @geg6: The fact that Haaland had to say “the country will keep using fossil fuels for years to come”… well, YEAH. What did people think she was going to do, unilaterally declare we were going to operate on solar panels after her first day in office?

    He needs to have a similar moment with Neera Tanden. “I’ve discussed this with her and we agree that her previous comments regarding Republicans were inappropriate for a cabinet member. However, she made those comments while still in a private capacity and she has convinced me that she will maintain proper decorum and comity in this office.”

  87. 87.

    Immanentize

    @geg6: I’m in a college scholarship black hole.  Because the Financial aid calculation was based on the tax returns when my wife was still alive (which doubles my current household income) we were pretty screwed.  I haven’t figured any way to get out of that hole?  We saved for the Immp’s college, but his school is expensive and with his tuition and expenses, I am spending faster than making.  Any thoughts?  I can check in tomorrow….

  88. 88.

    Ruckus

    @Leto:

    From what I’ve seen at the LA VA hospital, the groups are going through pretty good. They have two areas set up now, you show up, wait a few moments, they send you inside and within a minute or two, you have a needle in your arm. It was that way for both my shots. I was actually in and out well before my appointment time for both shots.

  89. 89.

    geg6

    @Immanentize: ​ You need to request a Special Circumstance Evaluation from the school. It will subtract any of her income from your tax information and recalculate the FAFSA EFC to a more realistic number for your real-life current situation. They should have told you that last year.​ USDE allows every school to use professional judgment for special circumstances.

  90. 90.

    Immanentize

    @geg6: Our University has Trio, including McNair.  It is one of the coolest stem programs going, I think.

    Someone mentioned art schools?  They are among the most expensive college educations going.  Last I looked, of the top 20 most expensive programs, art schools were 12 of the 20.  It seems to be in part the accreditation requirements of space and studio class time (2 hours studio per  credit hour, maximum 8 students per professor in studio)

  92. 92.

    CatFacts

    @geg6: Ah, got it. You’d know more than I would. I had an acquaintance who had a McNair scholarship a few years ago, but that’s all.

    Out of curiosity, what sort of students would McNair benefit?

  95. 95.

    Kent

    @Brachiator:

    I don’t understand (well, I do, but still) why DeJoy won’t just resign. Lots of people hate his guts and want him gone.

    He seems to be determined to cause as much damage as he can before he leaves. This is sad, and I wonder if Biden or the Congress can stop him from doing too much harm.

    Congress and the DOJ can make his life miserable through endless hearings and investigations into all of his conflicts of interest and malfeasance.  There is a shitload of it.  Until he gets sick of grand jury investigations and having his private finances drug through the mud and decides to go away.

    Biden can also fill out the remainder of the Postal Advisory Board (whatever it is called) and they can fire him for cause if they have cause.

  96. 96.

    Ruckus

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    It’s actually easy, it’s just that a lot of people won’t say it out loud, he is a fucking conservative asshole. He thinks it’s his lot in life to fuck up as much of the government as possible.

  97. 97.

    geg6

    @CatFacts: ​
     
    Strictly STEM majors who are low income, first generation college students who are aiming for doctoral studies and only available at about 150 schools.

  99. 99.

    geg6

    @Immanentize: ​
     
    I worked in two TRIO programs, the Educational Opportunity Center (EOC) and TalentSearch. EOC worked with adults to get them ready for post-secondary education (help completing the FAFSA, help getting a GED, etc.) and TalentSearch was at the high school level and I worked with a very low income school district here doing the same things for those kids as I did for the adults in EOC.

  100. 100.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Brachiator:

    I think I read that Biden is nominating three people to go to the PO Board of Governors which which when confirmed would give Democrats a majority on the board, enough to remove DeJoy

  102. 102.

    trollhattan

    @Kent:
    Of the school she was accepted to, we only had to rule out Wellesley because of cost. They had a very generous offer but because the kid’s timeline is post-grad the combination of loans and out-of-pocket would have saddled her with considerable debt coupled with our inability to assist her w/ med or grad school.
    We felt awful because it was a dream school and a real credit to her on being accepted. Lord knows what happens if she got into Brown.
    TBH I never thought a private college would cost, net, less than in-state UC but here we are–it all worked out,​

  103. 103.

    Cermet

    @J R in WV: Facts are facts and you need to either lighten up or read – the US had a huge ‘rare earth” production industry in the 70’s to 80’s. It was all put out of business via China’s under cutting. So please refrane from trying to preach what you do not know.

    Again, sure the US can ‘force’ companies to only buy american and drive up the costs – yet that isn’t likely to happen when companies find numerous ways to avoid those requirements.

    Finally what does that achieve anyway? China isn’t out enemy like Russia – or do you buy into the current thug bull shit about China. Not that China isn’t evil towards some of its people but that does not make it our enemy.

  104. 104.

    mali muso

    @Central Planning: ​
     FYI, she might also consider schools in mainland Europe. They are typically taught in English (as mobility across the continent is important) and are very inexpensive, even if paying the “international student” rates. Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden would be worth a look.

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