AJ, two topics. Houtis and War on Terror.

 Houtis

Red Sea nations watch as Houthis seize Bab al-Mandeb strait 

Will the Houthi attacks activate the Mecca Pact? 

 War on Terror

9/11 at 25: How the ‘War on Terror’ helped mainstream Europe’s far right 

The dystopian legal architecture of the ‘war on terror’ must be dismantled 

 The links are given without excerpting or commentary, beyond the Mecca Pact means little unless tested to mean a lot; and the War on Terror was a Republican thing, invading Iraq?? And now a war on Uranium Enrichment, or worded that way in untrustworthy posturing. 

4 weeks the dude said. Who trusted that? Hegseth? JD? Bibi? Trump, himself?

Perhaps "nobody" works as good as an answer as any. 

 

 

The Internet of Things, IOT, awaits you.

https://blog.boerzel.de/de/blog/operation-smart-kettle

 

Politics in the local sense is a normal narrowing of focus, as an election day gets closer and closer.

 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61e598971a0fa753c382bcb2/c42445f4-2738-4c8c-b046-50a10a8a68af/Niska051726-0155av.jpeg?format=1000w

a reposting, not an any way whatsoever an endorsement - the mood actually being the opposite

 They both have nice teeth.

Beyond that, minnreformer.com has published:

Demuth proposes teacher performance pay, wants changes to free school meals

By Michelle Griffith - September 10, 2026 9:23 pm

Education is the word we use for preparing the next generation for the real world without their committing suicide the senior year of high school. Something like that. The private prep schools to of course train leaders, the public schools to train followers, mortgage holder studen debt facing individuals.

Generating a citizenship spirit is a thought. Wtf that means being a mystery but we know being "woke" is wrong and we can expect demuth or niska to remind us of that if the more strident Republicans fail the task, they remain there wanting our vote and ready to backstop any doub of "woke" whatever that means..

Minnreformer publishes in part-

Demuth, the GOP nominee for governor, cited her decade of experience on her local school board — prior to serving in the Legislature — as a needed qualification for getting student achievement back on track.

“We’ll be focusing on the fundamentals of reading, math and science. We want to make sure that we are spending wisely with fewer mandates. We’ll provide safety for all students in all schools,” Demuth said at a Capitol press conference Thursday.

Demuth is facing Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar in November. Klobuchar has pledged to raise student achievement, ban cell phones in classrooms and work with school districts to limit screen-time. Demuth said she would encourage school districts to limit screen-time, rather than a blanket ban.

Demuth said the state will also implement teacher performance pay, because “better teachers deserve better pay.” She was unable to say what metric would be used for teachers to receive additional pay. Some states and districts use student academic performance or classroom observations to determine a teacher’s pay, in part.

Minnesota already has a teacher performance-linked payment program, and over 100 school districts participate in it. It’s unclear how Demuth’s proposal is different from what the state already offers.

Education Minnesota, the state’s teachers union, has endorsed Klobuchar for governor.

First paragraph a decade of experience is distinct from a decade of getting it right. The two might be congruent, but they might be a distance apart, depending upon much that is subjective. 

What might objective getting it right look like? That's a thinking trap if you are fair minded, since goals can be configured to aims in a tortured way, or even dishonestly characterized.

Then, teacher "performance pay" perks. That is a thicket of belief that standardized testing and class average performance means something independent from some people are smart and some dumb and in private schools you can harvest the low hanging fruit, based on a pseudo-genetic argument the wealthy parents are smarter, and kids they have will be, so private school them, and public school teachers take what they get, skill and insight capability varying. There are religious schools and Niska and his voucher liking is grounded in that, he went to one, his kids go to the same one, and his spouse Jen at one point chaired the managing board of that one. It seems to be a shaping experience, that kind of private school where you pay for it for your children, or you jigger up vouchers so that the public pays for private schooling. Back to Minnreformer -

Asked whether she would continue Minnesota’s free school meals program passed during the Democratic-Farmer-Labor trifecta in 2023, Demuth said children from wealthy families shouldn’t be eligible.

“When a family is making six- and sometimes seven-figure incomes, their kids do not need free meals,” Demuth said.

Means testing where six figures these inflationary Trump days is not that big a thing as it was - and you do means testing and what, some kids get meal vouchers, some don't and you have administering costs.

Demuth said as governor she would opt into more federal education funding, like the new $1,700 tax credit for taxpayers who donate to scholarship-granting organizations. The tax credit was passed last year in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and it allows nonprofits to use the money donated to offer scholarships for public or private school programs.

Crabgrass did search =  big beautiful bill $1700 tax credit is just vouchers tarted up

Surprisingly, my doing that search - biased in its phrasing - and under my generic profiling got top three hits

Democrats try to repeal tax credit from 'Big Beautiful Bill' 

Private schools have benefited from vouchers. Now public schools aim to cash in 

10 things to know about Trump’s new school voucher program

Under my profiling alone, search =  $1700 tax credit voucher

returned top three

The $1,700 Loophole: How the New Federal School Choice Tax Credit Lowers Private Tuition Bills

 Fact Sheet: President Trump Delivers Affordable School Choice Options
Through Education Freedom Tax Credit (a federal executive branch item)

School Vouchers Explained: What the New Federal Program Means

Crabgrass views any film-flam or direct rerouting of tax money (or provision of biased tax credits) which down funds public education as a burden on some to finance arbitrary depletion of public education money to elsewhere and hence a bad thing. Clearly, opinions vary. Minnreformer continues - 

The Minnesota Department of Education has said the tax credit, which is a circuitous form of a private school voucher program long championed by conservative activists, would disproportionately help wealthier Minnesotans.

Demuth’s education plan also says she will remove “‘woke’ standards adopted by the Walz status quo.” Asked what standards the plan refers to, Demuth said her administration will do an evaluation of the state’s education mandates and remove standards that “are pushing our kids away from the basics of reading, math and science.”

Is that side stepping the question, or what? 

Demuth’s plan also includes changes to the state’s teacher licensing board to ensure the board is working to “prepare the next generation of workers and not the next generation of activists,” referring to conservative assertions that the schools are being used to indoctrinate Minnesota students in progressive politics.

That's just pure horseshitting and telling something, by her characterization. 

So, the opening image, Demuth and Niska together, fits their congruent voucher outlook. Crabgrass has no knowledge of Demuth's offspring, if any, and how their schooling was, but she had a decade on the school board, so public schooling is most likely. Readers can search out the question. Niska, a private religion based school for the kids and spouse a part of running the adventure.

https://educationminnesota.org/ is worthwhile. Professionals with experience - and the idea you'd not want brain surgery done by auto mechanics, nor auto repair by cardiologists - matters.

 UPDATE: Demuth wants safe schools. Does she think Klobucher wants unsafe ones? That's not worth even saying, as a given of politics. Safe home, safe streets, safe schools, safe supermarkets, safe sex.

Why say it into the item more than once?? Safe schools can be via National Guard permanant 1:1 guardsman to student ratios, or by some lesser, ideally specified, measures. 

As to specificity, Demuth is specific about the $1700 voucher plan, and little else. D-

Not that Klobuchar would score highter on any realistic specificity scoring range. 

All I really know about current events and moves is from reading Internet text and watching Internet video. What of the vast content you select will bias what you know and think? So, do the periodic check on ZeroHedge, and include a look at sidebar listed other sites.

 https://www.youtube.com/@misesmedia

We kind of know vaguely what to expect from 

Breaking Bessent

 We learn that three pundits are better than one, since a conversation seems more popular than a lecture.

Also, facial hair is now accepted on a wide scale.

What interests from that 3/4 hr item, criticism without answers begs the question of what the answer could be to a bollixed situation. An interesting "interest" opening discussion, bond yields, all that.

An interesting side effect of going to that item, the YouTube rec. list goes in a direction that is uncommon for it, at Crabgrass, given Google profiling algorithms and wisdom.

The item linked above was reached when ZeroHedge came to mind, somehow, from AJ early morning reading, BRICS summit 2026: What are the key takeaways?

  That brought to mind the BRICS effort to distance a bit from IMF and U.S./Europe banking hegemony, and a search = brics alternative to world bank

Try that. The return list seemed to suggest that the distancing from Western banking policy and norms is not really showing traction, with 2014 mentioned as the BRICS start of that alternative banking policy.

While thinking in that direction ZeroHedge came to mind, one item there being "China's 70% EV Target Deals Another Blow To Oil Demand."

 Then, the sidebar links ZeroHedg offered, one other looked at, https://www.christophe-barraud.com/blog/

In closing, none of the things explored say whatever, and what they say is their's, not Crabgrass's.

But seeing "Econ-thought" where the offered check-this-next recommender system output drifts from the normal profiled stuff - that is interesting to see, as a pathological look at profile channeling as done by Silicon guru lists of "have a look here." It seems a web exists which channels an awful lot, and each of us should try to jiggle the profile every so often to not be in the regular wagon rut return protocol.

 

This was forwarded to me, an email from Tom Emmer. There is the notion of a lie by half-truth. This Emmer email is the "Poster Child" of such a thing. In fact, call it quarter truth, or even 5% truth, because of what Emmer wrote, and what the actual situation is.

 Start with the key evicence, what Emmer wrote, full text, no text added, no text left out (images omitted):

Dear Friend, 

In the last months of Tim Walz’s failed tenure as governor, he can’t help himself from staging a few more politically motivated stunts. Recently, he signed an executive order to ban mining in Northern Minnesota, which is detrimental to our state’s economy, the Minnesotans who have relied on mining as their livelihood for generations, and our country’s national security. 

Mining is the backbone of Northern Minnesota. It creates union jobs, brings billions of dollars of investment back to our state, and aids the nation’s efforts to end our dependence on China, which is crucial to national security. Walz’s ban defies common sense, as it would send more of the mining industry to countries like China and Russia who simply do not care about their environmental impact. Meanwhile, the United States has the most stringent environmental laws in the world, and our domestic mining projects are done responsibly. 

This week in Washington, we passed the Protecting Domestic Mining Act, which would provide a streamlined, targeted, and clear-cut permitting process. This legislation strengthens our country’s mineral production and supply and reduces our reliance on foreign adversaries for these critical minerals. Bringing mining back to Northern Minnesota will not only boost Minnesota’s economy, it will provide good-paying jobs for hundreds of Minnesotans. 

In Northern Minnesota, mining is a way of life – but Governor Walz continually fails to recognize the interests of our state as a whole. In his mind, “One Minnesota” really means “One Downtown Minneapolis.” His policies only prioritize the most Far-Left extremes of the political spectrum, and Northern Minnesotans deserve better.

I have always supported the mining industry in the great state of Minnesota, and will continue to do so. It is disheartening to have mining consistently under attack from so-called leaders like Governor Walz. The days of the Radical Left handcuffing our state's mining industry are OVER.

Sincerely, 

/s/ 

"Sincerely," but * * * with a bit of slight of hand non-mention of the sole key fact at issue.

Start with a few facts. Taconite is an iron ore, and its mining has been a profit making venture for mining companies in Minnesota for many decades, and a source, the major source at a guess, of employment income to the great majority of Minnesota's "Iron Range" families. 

Indeed, Taconite has been continuously mined in Minnesota. yielding profits and jobs, for more than at least half a century, and while the State government and regulators have had a generally favorable outlook toward Taconite mining ventures, they have not been without problems needed to be fixed. 

Yet, the problems have not stopped the mining. But over time some grotesque offenses of the mining firms' penny pinching to maximize shareholder rapacious gain-lust have been curbed in the public interest, without coming near to killing the cash cow. The cash cow today is prospering and yielding needed tax income to the state.

See:  e.g., Reserve Mining Co. v. Herbst, 256 NW 2d 808 (Minn 1977) for the landmark example of a taconite firm having to have a practice curbed, i.e., dumping asbestos laden mine tailings into Lake Superior. Once stopped, the industry came up with other ways of tailings disposal. Still profitable, but more restrained in terms of public harm.

THE KEY FACT EMMER OMITS 

Emmer wrote, "Recently, he [Gov.Walz] signed an executive order to ban mining in Northern Minnesota, which is detrimental to our state’s economy, the Minnesotans who have relied on mining as their livelihood for generations, and our country’s national security. [...]"  

Taconite mining, absolutely unaffected by the Walz order. 

A never before done in Minnesota copper/nickle mining proposal was curbed, where the public harm and foreseeable dangers were/are magnitudes greater because of sulfide ores being involved, resulting is acidity and heavy metal releases to the watershed housing the Boundary Waters Wilderness, and constrained by treaty with tribes holding by treaty the right to ongoing wild rice harvesting from the wetlands of the watershed, where poisoning the water moots any rights to aquaculture use.

Do note, the word "sulfide" is nowhere in the Emmer missive. 

At risk, the integrity of the pristine waters of the country's most visited of our National Parks, and the income of the extended wilderness outfitter trade community which has arisen from the worldwide popularity of the motor-free canoe waters.

Walz correctly determined the mining firms did not need to put the public interest at risk on any accelerated time frame, and his banning order was time restrained so that Minnesota's next governor, with her own senior regulatory staffing in place, could process the question without stress or rush or decisional bias history had Walz acted beyond a postponement, a temporal step only, rather than making some substantive situational choice that might hinder in any way his successor. 

(Her being the pronoun because both Parties have women on the November ballot for Governor). 

So, what Walz did was eminently reasonable, restrained beyond fault when all is known, so that a slant obscuring all that should be mentioned might confuse and mislead Emmer's readers.

Now, did Emmer tell a structured but partial story because he's too stupid to understand the total situation, and he did not know better, or was some other factor at play?

Bottom line: He is stupid, but not not that stupid!

So go figure. A con by the U.S. House Whip, because he sees the nation's Commander in Chief getting away with shit, and so why not emulate? Could it be?

Or is there some third explanation besides stupid or deliberate con?

Readers, figure it out. It's not as if it's a complicated situation. It's pretty clear.

UPDATE: Related items, here, here and here. Try search = sulfide copper mine tailings storage failures worldwide

 

AJ has a retrospective upon this 25th anniversary of the downing of the twin towers and building 7.

 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2026/9/11/everything-changed-the-human-cost-of-25-years-of-us-wars

"War on Terror" was as likely an invented name of the Vice President, Cheney, as being first thought up by W bush.

They were strong-minded graceless people, and in Trump - JD - Hegseth times we can forget that things were very bad earlier.

Aside from death and suffering, what did "War on Terror" result in? Anything good?

Anything bad being prevented? Keeping the Saudi royals in power, or did they do that themselves, bone saw and all? The death toll when the towers collapsed into their footprints seems due to faulty evacuation orders, faulty communication, more than other factors.

At any rate, 25 years ago today, the Twin Towers and Building 7 were brought down in one day.

Then there was the very supervised sorting through and removing the rubble. Security was said to be tight.

In a total long term analysis, War on Terror was not a helpful thing for the world. Or it seems that way, and the U.S. Intelligence machine has not told us much in favor of it that Crabgrass has seen.

Twenty five years later, Iran is surviving U.S. military pressure, some say winning.

We have had unimpressive administrations over that 25 year span. Oil, a lot pumped in 25 years, but in what seems sane thinking, renewables and checking global warming seem sound goals.

W bush said, "We have to win every time, the terrorists only have to win once." WTF does that mean? What has history shown true? Do we miss not having Cheney with us still? Are we better without him?

 UPDATE: My 9/11 memorial search today = 9/11 coverage tucker carlson

Readers can try that one, or one of their own making. Not that Crabgrass followed up on any search returns in detail. It was more seeing what the search return list looked like. Which media outlets were in the top returns.

Official versions since Kennedy require belief of credibility and dismissal of cause to doubt or question. Not that they are wrong, that's an unknown, but they require a will to believe and a want to believe.

If JFK was not a lone gunman story, etc. If claims are made of thermite residue showing up after the twin  towers and building7 fell, what does Crabgrass know and have access to, beyond official stories and things others publish suggesting cover-up, where who can prove what remains murky. 

We do know LBJ became President after JFK's murder, that he covered up the attack on the Liberty, and that minority civil rights were advanced under LBJ. And VietNam did not end until Nixon. And that since that period we have had an all volunteer standing army, warring against terror. No forced enlistments.

But, bottom line, so what? How will history see things two hundred years from now, including in light of intervening events now to then? If the earth makes it that long without nuclear winter killoff, etc.

Of interest, Blogger spell check did not have thermite in its reach, suggesting termite instead.

End of meanderings for today. One post today, This one. 

FURTHER UPDATE: https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/09/10/repub/how-9-11-changed-the-way-america-surveils-its-citizens/ -- Not news. We all know that. And accept it anyway. How it is.

As noted in an earlier Crabgrass post, Timmer has been writing of Repub candidate Demuth.

 The earlier Timmer post is here, his new item links to it. The Crabgrass notice coverage, here. The UPDATE part of the Crabgrass item is the part about Timmer's earlier post.

Timmer now writes -

Even Claude recognizes Lisa’s bullshit

 In the item Timmer quereys Claude about detail of immigrant gang and crime as part of the waves that happened, and he extols the AI as good at list generation, see that link and its detail.

Bottom line - Somali immigrants are recent and seen as discordant by those not attuned to immigration history Timmer discusses. It is a good read.

Another item Timmer posts is per its opening executive summary paragraph -

There was a spirited discussion last evening on X about the Hennepin County Attorney race. I am very pro-Cedrick Fraizer; there were others in the discussion who were pro-Folk, some of them rather spittle-flecked. Now Tommy wasn’t spittle-flecked; he’s a friend. I am going to pick out one of his tweets posts, though, to get this story going [...]

Being ignorant of candidates and issues there, I leave the link and tout it as Timmer always writes well.

All politics is local, and Crabgrass has posted its own very local news on occasion. You have to. It matters. Of the most general interest, the two Timmer items about Demuth.