Whenever asked about whether the US will change its policy regarding the conflict in Ukraine, to start pushing for Kyiv to enter negotiations rather than apparently providing as much money and as many weapons as they ask for, the Biden administration’s refrain has been a consistent variation of “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing as long as it takes.”

As long as it takes for what?

Another month has passed, and the Federal Reserve has once again been able to shrink its balance sheet. It’s now 7 months since the official start of Quantitative Tightening (QT). As of last release, on Thursday, their balance sheet stood at $8.507 trillion.

The long-term chart reveals it’s much easier to expand the balance sheet than to shrink it, with stock market crashes and recessions typically following.

Mention the term “deep state” in polite company and most likely no one will want to speak to you the rest of the evening. The deep state is what Wikipedia calls “discredited,” something reeking of conspiracies, false accusations, and the substitution of fantasy for the truth.

Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter Portfolio/Penguin, 2021, xv + 201 pp.

John McWhorter is an eminent linguistics professor who teaches at Columbia. He is himself black, and he argues that “woke” racism does not help blacks and other minorities. It has, he says, become a religion, and those who question it are dealt with severely by its acolytes, to the detriment of a free society. He does not confine the book to criticism but also proposes a three-step program aimed to help blacks succeed.

In recent years, we’ve seen the issue of changing US state borders come up repeatedly. For example, activists in some Colorado counties in 2013 proposed breaking off to form a new state. Since 2021, a similar idea has persisted in having Weld County, Colorado join the State of Wyoming. In 2016, California activists sought a vote on splitting the enormous state into 6 states. It failed to get enough signatures, but in 2018, a similar proposal for 3 new states did get enough signatures.