The Ridiculous Legend of Hillary Rodham Clinton Remains Alive and Well on the Left — and in Her Mind

Mike Miller reporting for RedState

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. There’s never been anyone quite like her in American politics. Certainly, there hasn’t been a worse presidential candidate since Democrat George McGovern lost the 1972 election to Richard Nixon in a historic landslide. And then there are Hillary’s accomplishments to consider.

More accurately, Hillary’s lack of accomplishments to consider.

Think about it. From First Lady (1993—2001) to United States Senator from New York (2001—2009) to Secretary of State under Barack Obama (2009—2013) to two awful presidential campaigns (2008 and 2016), what has she accomplished on the national political stage? For the betterment of America, no less?

P.S: Job titles are not accomplishments.

To be fair, Hillary has been so ridiculously propped up and revered through the decades by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and other Democrat mouthpieces, one cannot entirely blame the former presidential candidate who called half the country a basket of deplorables for remaining a silly legend in her own mind to the extent that it’s “almost like” she’s never going to go away. Ever.

Triumphs?

So there you have it. A delusional legend who steadfastly believes the 2016 election was stolen from her, and nonsensically hangs on to the silly notion that she and she and alone can save America. Hence, Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton has once again thrust herself into the left-wing spotlight.

As we reported earlier in the week, the hood ornament (along with Nancy Pelosi) of the Democrat Trump Derangement Syndrome short bus is once again (still) obsessed with Donald Trump, warning that a Trump win in 2024 would surely be “the end of our democracy.”

As transcribed by Yahoo, Hillary recently told NBC’s Willie Geist, in part:

If I were a betting person right now, I’d say Trump is going to run again. He seems to be setting himself up to do that, and if he’s not held accountable, he gets to do it again.

I think that could be the end of our democracy (a recurring Hillary theme). Not to be too pointed about it, but I want people to understand that this could be a make-or-break point.

If he or someone of his ilk were once again to be elected president, especially if he had a Congress that would do his bidding, you will not recognize our country.

And of course, no political interview with Hillary is complete without her tossing in a few “I could have won,” “I would have won,” “I should have won” lines, blaming everyone and everything else but herself.

I tried to warn people. I tried to make the case that this was really dangerous — the people he was allied with, what they were saying, what he might do. I do think but for Jim Comey and the stunt he pulled 10 days before the election, I would have won.

So that brings us to now.

Yup, according to multiple reports and a fair amount of wishful thinking on the left, Hillary, convinced that Trump is running, wants a rematch. Bigly. Who knew?

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, as transcribed on Wednesday by The Hill, said Hillary’s recent appearances are based on her belief that the wheels will continue to fall off the Biden presidency — a sure bet — and she sees it as an opportunity to even the score with Trump.

Hillary Clinton wants the nomination. She knows the Biden administration is falling apart, which is why you’re seeing her surface right now. So it could be a replay. But voters make up their own mind.

Columnist and Fox News contributor Joe Concha in a Wednesday op-ed suggested Hilary might be a good choice for Democrats in 2024, in large part do other even worse options.

2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is an interesting prospect to consider when looking for a viable candidate, particularly if an 80-something President Biden decides not to seek a second term. And why would he?

Just 22 percent of voters want him to seek a second term, according to a I&I-TIPP poll.

It doesn’t get much better when polling only Democrats, where just 36 percent want to see the president run again, with that juggernaut candidate named “someone else” coming in first with 44 percent support.

After ticking through other possible options in the event Biden doesn’t run (Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren), Concha returned to the possibility of Hillary.

If those are the options, why not Hillary? She’s 74 years old, which is like being bathed in the fountain of youth compared to Biden. And she’s still stunned — five years later — that she actually lost to Donald Trump.

In fact, she sounds no different than Trump in constantly complaining about all the reasons she lost and that, well, the election was stolen by Trump and the Russians anyway.

That type of rhetoric is a big no-no for Trump, but A-OK if Hillary (or Stacey Abrams) does it. Rules are rules.

Concha also touched on Hillary’s recent reading of a 2016 victory speech she never delivered.

One more possible sign that Hillary is dipping her toe in the 2024 pool comes in the form of her bizarre decision to read her 2016 victory speech for something called “Masterclass.” It was one of the most cringeworthy things you’ll ever see.

Instead, here she is, a losing candidate reading a five-year-old victory speech. And in case you’re asking if any losing presidential candidate had done anything like this before, the answer is no.

Ah, Joe, but Hillary is Hillary.

And remember, the lapdog media continues to fawn over her at every opportunity — real or contrived.

So it comes as no surprise that some of those lapdogs are already quietly beginning to do her bidding.

While measuring for Biden’s coffin in the meantime.

The Turn

When I saw the left give up everything I believe in, 

I changed politically. You can, too.

by Liel Leibovitz for Tablet Magazine

For many years—most of my politically cognizant life, in fact—I felt secure in my politics. Truth and justice, I believed, leaned leftward. If you were some version of a decent human being, you cared about those less fortunate than you, which meant that you supported a whole host of measures designed to even the playing field a little. Sometimes, these measures had unintended consequences (see under: Stalin, Josef), but that wasn’t reason enough to despair of the long march to equality. Besides, there was hardly an alternative: On the other end of the political transom lurked despicable creeps, right-wing orcs who either cared for nothing but their own petty financial interests or, worse, pined for benighted isms that preached prejudice and hate. We were on the right side of history. We were the people. We were the ones giving peace a chance. And, no matter the present, we were always the future.

This belief carried me through high school, and a brief stint in a socialist youth movement. It accelerated me in college, sending me anywhere from joint marches with Palestinians to a two-week hunger strike in Jerusalem trying (and failing) to lower tuition for underprivileged students. It pulled me to New York, to Columbia University, to more left-wing politics and activism and raging against Republicans whose agenda, especially in the 2000s, seemed like nothing more than greed and war.

And it wasn’t just an ideology, some abstract set of convictions that were accessible only through cracking open dusty old books. It was the animating spirit of life itself: The dinner parties I attended on the Upper West Side required dismissive comments on President Bush just as much as they did a bit of wine to make the evening bright, and there was no faster or surer way to signal to a new acquaintance that you were a kindred spirit than praising the latest Times editorial. It wasn’t performative, exactly. At least, it felt real enough, the reverent rites of a good group of people protecting itself against the bad guys.

I embraced my people, and my people embraced me. They gave me everything I had always imagined I wanted: a Ph.D. from an Ivy League university; a professorship at NYU, complete with a roomy office overlooking Washington Square Park; book deals; columns in smart little publications; invitations to the sort of soirees where you could find yourself seated next to Salman Rushdie or Susan Sontag or any number of the men and women you grew up reading and admiring. The list goes on. Life was good. I was grateful.

And then came The Turn. If you’ve lived through it yourself, you know that The Turn doesn’t happen overnight, that it isn’t easily distilled into one dramatic breakdown moment, that it happens hazily and over time—first a twitch, then a few more, stretching into a gnawing discomfort and then, eventually, a sense of panic.

You may be among the increasing numbers of people going through The Turn right now. Having lived through the turmoil of the last half decade—through the years of MAGA and antifa and rampant identity politics and, most dramatically, the global turmoil caused by COVID-19—more and more of us feel absolutely and irreparably politically homeless. Instinctively, we looked to the Democratic Party, the only home we and our parents and their parents before them had ever known or seriously considered. But what we saw there—and in the newspapers we used to read, and in the schools whose admission letters once made us so proud—was terrifying. However we tried to explain what was happening on “the left,” it was hard to convince ourselves that it was right, or that it was something we still truly believed in. That is what The Turn is about.

You might be living through The Turn if you ever found yourself feeling like free speech should stay free even if it offended some group or individual but now can’t admit it at dinner with friends because you are afraid of being thought a bigot. You are living through The Turn if you have questions about public health policies—including the effects of lockdowns and school closures on the poor and most vulnerable in our society—but can’t ask them out loud because you know you’ll be labeled an anti-vaxxer. You are living through The Turn if you think that burning down towns and looting stores isn’t the best way to promote social justice, but feel you can’t say so because you know you’ll be called a white supremacist. You are living through The Turn if you seethed watching a terrorist organization attack the world’s only Jewish state, but seethed silently because your colleagues were all on Twitter and Facebook sharing celebrity memes about ending Israeli apartheid while having little interest in American kids dying on the streets because of failed policies. If you’ve felt yourself unable to speak your mind, if you have a queasy feeling that your friends might disown you if you shared your most intimately held concerns, if you are feeling a bit breathless and a bit hopeless and entirely unsure what on earth is going on, I am sorry to inform you that The Turn is upon you.

The Turn hit me just a beat before it did you, so I know just how awful it feels. It’s been years now, but I still remember the time a dear friend and mentor took me to lunch and warned me, sternly and without any of the warmth you’d extend to someone you truly loved, to watch what I said about Israel. I still remember how confusing and painful it felt to know that my beliefs—beliefs, mind you, that, until very recently, were so obvious and banal and widely held on the left that they were hardly considered beliefs at all—now labeled me an outcast. The Turn brings with it the sort of pain most of us don’t feel as adults; you’d have to go all the way back to junior high, maybe, to recall a stabbing sensation quite as deep and confounding as watching your friends all turn on you and decide that you’re not worthy of their affection any more. It’s the kind of primal rejection that is devastating precisely because it forces you to rethink everything, not only your convictions about the world but also your idea of yourself, your values, and your priorities. We all want to be embraced. We all want the men and women we consider most swell to approve of us and confirm that we, too, are good and great. We all want the love and the laurels; The Turn takes both away.

But, having been there before, I have one important thing to tell you: If the left is going to make it “right wing” to simply be decent, then it’s OK to be right.

Why? Because, after 225 long and fruitful years of this terminology, “right” and “left” are now empty categories, meaning little more than “the blue team” and “the green team” in your summer camp’s color war. You don’t get to be “against the rich” if the richest people in the country fund your party in order to preserve their government-sponsored monopolies. You are not “a supporter of free speech” if you oppose free speech for people who disagree with you. You are not “for the people” if you pit most of them against each other based on the color of their skin, or force them out of their jobs because of personal choices related to their bodies. You are not “serious about economic inequality” when you happily order from Amazon without caring much for the devastating impact your purchases have on the small businesses that increasingly are either subjugated by Jeff Bezos’ behemoth or crushed by it altogether. You are not “for science” if you refuse to consider hypotheses that don’t conform to your political convictions and then try to ban critical thought and inquiry from the internet. You are not an “anti-racist” if you label—and sort!—people by race. You are not “against conformism” when you scare people out of voicing dissenting opinions.

When “the left” becomes the party of wealthy elites and state security agencies who preach racial division, state censorship, contempt for ordinary citizens and for the U.S. Constitution, and telling people what to do and think at every turn, then that’s the side you are on, if you are “on the left”—those are the policies and beliefs you stand for and have to defend. It doesn’t matter what good people “on the left” believed and did 60 or 70 years ago. Those people are dead now, mostly. They don’t define “the left” anymore than Abraham Lincoln defines the modern-day Republican Party or Jimi Hendrix defines Nickelback.

So look at the list of things supported by the left and ask yourself: Is that me? If the answer is yes, great. You’ve found a home. If the answer is no, don’t let yourself be defined by an empty word. Get out. And once you’re out, don’t let anyone else define you, either. Not being a left-wing racist or police state fan doesn’t make you a white supremacist or a Trump worshipper, either. Only small children, machines, and religious fanatics think in binaries.

Which isn’t to diminish the anger, hurt, and confusion you’re feeling just now. But it’s worth understanding that your story has a happy ending. The freedom you feel on the other side is so real it’s physical, like emerging from a long stretch underwater and taking that first deep breath in the cool afternoon air. None of it makes the lost friends or the lost career opportunities any less painful; but there’s no more potent source of renewable energy than liberty, and your capacity to reinvent—yourself, your group, your life—is greater than you realize.

So welcome to the right side, friend, and join us in laughing at all the idiotic name-calling that is applied, with increasing hysteria, to try and stop more and more normal Americans from joining our ranks. Fascists? Conspiracy theorists? Anti-science racist TERFs? Whatever. We have a better word to describe ourselves: free.

X22, On the Fringe, and more-Dec 16

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

 

Why Is the Left Worried Suddenly About the End of Democracy? ~ VDH

They are fearful and angry not because democracy doesn’t work, but because it does despite their media and political efforts to warp it.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

What is behind recent pessimistic appraisals of democracy’s future, from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams and other elite intellectuals, media personalities, and politicians on the Left? Some are warning about its possible erosion in 2024. Others predict the democracy downturn as early 2022, with scary scenarios of “autocracy” and Trump “coups.” 

To answer that question, understand first what is not behind these shrill forecasts. 

They are not worried about 2 million foreign nationals crashing the border in a single year, without vaccinations during a pandemic. Yet it seems insurrectionary for a government simply to nullify its own immigration laws. 

They are not worried that some 800,000 foreign nationals, some residing illegally, will now vote in New York City elections. 

They are not worried that there are formal efforts to dismantle the U.S. Constitution by junking the 233-year-old Electoral College or the preeminence of the states in establishing ballot laws in national elections. 

They are not worried that we are witnessing an unprecedented left-wing effort to scrap the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year tradition of 50 states, for naked political advantage. 

They are not worried that the Senate this year put on trial an impeached ex-president and private citizen, without the chief justice in attendance, without a special prosecutor or witnesses, and without a formal commission report of presidential high crimes and misdemeanors. 

They are not worried that the FBI, Justice Department, CIA, Hillary Clinton, and members of the Obama Administration systematically sought to use U.S. government agencies to sabotage a presidential campaign, transition, and presidency, via the use of a foreign national and ex-spy Christopher Steele and his coterie of discredited Russian sources. 

They are not worried that the Pentagon suddenly has lost the majority support of the American people. Top current and retired officers have flagrantly violated the chain-of-command, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and without data or evidence have announced a hunt in the ranks for anyone suspected of “white rage” or “white supremacy.” 

They are not worried that in 2020, a record 64 percent of the electorate did not cast their ballots on Election Day. 

Nor are they worried that the usual error rate in most states of non-Election Day ballots plunged—even as an unprecedented 101 million ballots were cast by mail or early voting. 

And they are certainly not worried that partisan billionaires of Silicon Valley poured well over $400 million into selected precincts in swing states to “help” public agencies conduct the election. 

What then is behind this new left-wing hysteria about the supposed looming end of democracy? 

It is quite simple. The Left expects to lose power over the next two years—both because of the way it gained and used it, and because of its radical, top-down agendas that never had any public support. 

After gaining control of both houses of Congress and the presidency—with an obsequious media and the support of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, higher education, popular culture, entertainment and professional sports—the Left has managed in just 11 months to alienate a majority of voters. 

The nation has been wracked by unprecedented crime and nonenforcement of the borders. Leftist district attorneys either won’t indict criminals or let them out of jails or both. 

Illegal immigration and inflation are soaring. Deliberate cuts in gas and oil production helped to spike fuel prices. 

All this bad news is on top of the Afghanistan disaster, worsening racial relations, and an enfeebled president. 

Democrats are running 10 points behind the Republicans in generic polls—with the midterms less than a year away. 

Joe Biden’s negatives run between 50 and 57 percent—in Donald Trump’s own former underwater territory. 

Less than a third of the country wishes Biden to run for reelection. In many head-to-head polls, Trump now defeats Biden. 

In other words, leftist elites are terrified that democracy will work too robustly. 

After the Russian collusion hoax, the two impeachments, the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the staged melodramas of the Kavanaugh hearings, the Jussie Smollett con, the Covington kids smear, and the Rittenhouse trial race frenzy, the people are not just worn out by leftist hysterias, but also weary of how the Left gains power and administers it. 

If Joe Biden were polling 70 percent approval, and his policies 60 percent, the current doomsayers would be reassuring us of the “health of the system.” 

They are fearful and angry not because democracy does not work, but because it does despite their own media and political efforts to warp it.  

When a party becomes hijacked by radicals and uses almost any means necessary to gain and use power for agendas that few Americans support, then average voters express their disapproval. 

That reality apparently terrifies an elite—which then claims any system that allows the people to vote against the Left is not people power at all.

The War We Must Fight

We may be too weak to fight the anti-woke Communism war in which Tom Klingenstein urges us to enlist. But it’s a war we must prepare ourselves for, as the enemy is ourselves.

by Ken Masugi for American Greatness

“And what is most repugnant to me in America is not the extreme freedom that reigns there, it is the lack of a guarantee against tyranny.”   

“I have found genuine patriotism in the people; I have often sought it in vain in those who direct it.”

So observed the 19th century French observer of American democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, when commenting on how juries strengthen democracy in America. Yet last week, Tom Klingenstein, the magnanimous patriot and chairman of the board of the Claremont Institute, recounted recent American trials and concluded from those observations that America may yet become a “totalitarian police state,” in the grips of “woke communism.”  

In apparent contrast, Tocqueville thought juries (assisted by judges and lawyers) would educate themselves and other citizens in the republican virtues necessary to combat the weaknesses of democracy. They would bring reason and the good sense of the Anglo-American legal tradition to tame the passions that might overwhelm the deliberation in trials. In this way they would combat the chief weakness of democracy, as Tocqueville saw it: its tendency to produce tyrannical majorities.

Although they at first appear to be at odds, it turns out that Tocqueville and Klingenstein have far more in common than not. Tocqueville’s description of the tyranny of the majority resembles what Klingenstein and other astute observers understand in our time as “woke communism.” Comparing the two tyrannies forces us to consider the depth of the challenges we face.

Over 180 years ago, Tocqueville described legitimate democratic majority rule as “the moral empire of the majority.” He does not dwell on the term following its introduction, but he makes it clear that such a “moral empire” is the goal of his book. This “empire” would oppose both the tyranny of the majority and the rule of administrative centralization (a.k.a. bureaucracy)—something he concludes, with great foresight, is the likely fate of modern nations. By guaranteeing security and the material conditions of life,Tocqueville fears, the government of the future would enervate the lives of its former citizens, rendering them mere subjects.

The depth of that depressing conclusion is made all the more intense by the preceding 600 pages of vivid sketches of American types, such as the adventurous sea captain, the preacher, the frontiersman, and the pioneer woman. He had depicted Americans as a new race of people, both moral and independent, bold and adventurous, energetic and practical, spirited citizens—if slaveholders, romantics; if Yankees, hardworking. With administrative centralization, all of this character would be gone—dissolved into clerks, shopkeepers, and the disgusting courtiers of administration.

This rich tableaux of democratic types and the persistence of older resources from the age of aristocracy justified a fight against democratic pulverization of manly virtue. For example,Tocqueville compares America to a jury (that is, an institution capable of educating fellow citizens). At its best, American civic life might resemble a seminar in self-awareness, free men (and women) who draw on those learned in the Anglo-American legal traditions to tame their passions.

Yet when Americans have been trained to become subjects who crave security rather than justice, we can no longer depend on juries to teach republican virtues to fellow citizens, as Tocqueville hoped. Of course it can still happen, but those same juries can just as likely reinforce the tyranny of the majority of “woke communism.” Those whom democratic peoples ought to be able to honor, such as judges—and, yes, even attorneys—have in many cases now become agents of bureaucratic routine or the administrative state. (Of course Tocqueville knew lawyer jokes. He and the brilliant caricaturist Daumier were friends.) 

Thus, in democratic practice, Tocqueville asserts, there is “a lack of a guarantee against tyranny,” which may prove fatal to its existence. Moreover, this can be the ultimate tyranny, as it “goes straight for the soul,” unlike previous tyrannies that were about control of actions. This would be a form of government as demanding as any biblical religion. And in the age of Enlightenment it would be scientific, too. With the assistance of a Marxist adversary, the political philosopher Leo Strauss convincingly sketched such a tyranny in the mid-20th century. 

In Democracy in America Tocqueville describes a maturing America at war with radical modernity and all its self-aggrandizing powers—on the American side are common citizens, proud patriots, who maintain their freedom, against an all-powerful tyrant. This is the situation he described at the very end of the first volume of Democracy, where individualistic America and despotic Russia would split the world between them.

But this struggle against tyranny of the majority is a type of civil war still being fought within America. It is a particularly insidious war, for it is waged against one’s fellow Americans, and it is fought not primarily on a battlefield but over how one speaks in public, regards the law, and treats fellow citizens. (There is a kind of contrast here with the civil war that did take place over slavery, a war Tocqueville did not anticipate; that is a long story I will tell elsewhere.)

Unlike the patriots of 1776, the rebels against the tyranny of the majority may never enjoy recognition. And Tocqueville appears to despair that a tyranny of the majority can be overthrown.  

Whatever his doubts, Tocqueville outlines a strategy for turning the majority into a freedom-loving one—based on a refinement of self-interest—but our American strategy today will have to differ, for we no longer have the mores that Tocqueville thought contributed to American freedom, and even he at that time saw them crumbling under the blows of individualizing skepticism.

Here Klingenstein’s portrayal of contemporary America calls up resources (and challenges) Tocquevile missed. Tocqueville rejects the theory of the Declaration of Independence, that individuals seek to preserve their natural rights, including the pursuit of happiness, and a recognition that legitimate governments exist to preserve those rights and therefore must be constrained by the consent of the governed and the natural right to revolution.

Today skepticism and moral autonomy are far more powerful than in Tocqueville’s day. Those attitudes are encouraged by the administrative state. We may be too weak to fight the anti-woke communism war in which Klingenstein urges us to enlist. But it’s a war we must prepare ourselves for, as the enemy is ourselves. Tocqueville saw this, Lincoln knew it, and others in the Claremont orbit also realize what time it is.

Erasing All High School Standards In The Name Of Racism Is Actual Bigotry

The weird anti-racism of our time invokes harmful stereotypes that used to be uttered only by racists. Removing standards will make it impossible to evaluate whether a graduate’s diploma means anything at all.

Kyle Sammin reporting for The Federalist

A century ago, America began a new era in education known as the High School Movement. It was not a mandate imposed from Washington, but a widespread series of local efforts. As industrialization reduced the need for farm labor, the nation began to move from an economy based on physical strength to one based on knowledge. Levels of education rose across the country.

High school was meant to be a place where students could prepare for a professional career. And it worked. But now, high school has become a meaningless credential as administrators and politicians have steadily reduced the standards for graduation. Efforts like those of Gov. Kate Brown in Oregon to further diminish those standards will be the final blow to the once-great movement for state-supported self-improvement.

A Drive For Equal Opportunity

While public schools had existed for decades at the turn of the last century, most students did not attend long into their teenage years, leaving instead to find work and begin their adult lives. As detailed in a 1999 article by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “in 1910, just 9 percent of American youths earned a high school diploma, but by 1935, 40 percent did.” Expanding education that much was not cheap, but the country was growing more prosperous and — crucially — leading figures in communities across the nation wanted to see that prosperity spread out and multiplied.

The High School Movement was progressive in the literal sense of the word: it impelled real progress for American families, giving kids of every background a chance to better themselves through hard work in school then a better job and a more comfortable life than their parents had. But simple credentialing would not accomplish that: these new or expanded high schools had to teach people something useful, not just warehouse them for four years and print out a diploma.

As one might expect, the early effects were concentrated among white, middle-class students, but that gradually spread out. Once concentrated in big Northern cities, high schools spread south and west and into the countryside. After the Supreme Court ordered desegregation in the 1950s, that came to include black southerners, as well.

The expanded education system was designed to prepare millions of American kids for the working world, offering both academic and vocational education. It worked. Again, quoting Goldin and Katz: “Prior to 1900, secondary schools in much of America often trained youths to gain entry to particular colleges and universities in their vicinity. During the period of the high school movement, however, secondary education was transformed into training ‘for life,’ rather than ‘for college.’”

How Far We Have Fallen

Preparation for life meant holding young men and women to real standards. It’s hard to look at modern public schools and say that those standards remain intact. While progressivism once drove educators to offer more classes and demand more of students, the current version of that ideology is now demanding that educational achievement take a back seat to racial quotas and that standards be reduced or even eliminated.

Some of the biggest successes of the High School Movement came in New York City. The magnet schools there were a pathway to middle-class prosperity for New Yorkers of humble means, giving many without wealth or connections a chance to rise by their own merit. But since taking office in 2014, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been working to “demagnetize” the magnet schools because he disapproved of their racial balance.

As reported in City Journal in 2019, de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group “recommends the elimination of ability and performance screening for pupils, and condemns ‘attendance & punctuality’ metrics as ‘exclusionary’ against ‘Black and Latinx [sic] applicants.’” Calling it “exclusionary” to require students to show up on time is part of the weird anti-racism of our time that invokes harmful stereotypes that used to be uttered only by racists. But more than that, the plans to remove standards will make it impossible for prospective employers and colleges to know that a graduate’s diploma means anything at all.

No Standards At All

In Oregon, Brown and Democrats in the state legislature have gone even farther in dumbing down high school. Blaming the COVID-19 pandemic, Oregon Democrats effectively removed any standards for high school graduation. As The Oregonian noted in August 2021 when Brown signed the bill into law: “an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level.”

Brown signed the bill in private, tacitly acknowledging the shame of the thing. When her staff did finally speak to reporters on the subject, they used the same bizarre racial justifications that de Blasio’s committee did. In an emailed statement to The Oregonian, Charles Boyle, Brown’s deputy communications director, said that suspending the reading, writing, and math proficiency requirements would benefit “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”

Public high schools began as a way for all American children to learn and improve their employment opportunities through their own hard work. No tuition, no pedigree, no connections, only hard work and intelligence were required.

If Americans were looking for equality of opportunity across race, religion, class, and neighborhood, this was it. Now, after pushing kids away from vocational education in past decades, public schools water down the academic qualifications so much as to make them meaningless.

In 2000, Gov. George W. Bush called this sort of condescending attitude “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” That bigotry has taken over the progressive movement. A few middle-class parents who can afford it will take their kids out of schools that teach little and grade less, but most of them (and all of the poor) have no such option.They will be stuck in a system that expects nothing of kids and abolishes standards rather than helping kids live up to them. Meanwhile, a supposedly meritocratic elite locks in generational power by choosing private schools that help their children advance even further. So much for progress.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s Presser Should Alarm Everyone on Main Street

Sundance reporting at Conservative Treehouse

To me, this is just jaw-dropping.  The Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell made statements today akin to saying the emperor is wearing a beautiful coat.  I can share examples, but to really encapsulate the issues, it’s actually easier to start by sharing a chart he presented when discussing inflation.

Do you notice anything missing in this chart?   Look at it carefully.

If you look at it and say: “hey, where’s the actual 2021 data he is talking about“, give yourself a cookie.

The guy is talking about the issue of 2021 inflation and expressing his empathy that inflation is running “far ahead” of the federal reserve projections.  Yet, the graphic Powell uses doesn’t even show the 2021 rate of inflation that he is expressing his concern about.

Why wouldn’t the graphic show the rate of inflation for 2021?   Well, take one look at what the graph would look like, and you realize immediately why he would not want to put it in front of people.

This is in essence what the graphic would look like if Powell included the 2021 inflation he is concerned about:

The 6.8% inflation rate is just about where the dot in the “j” of the word projection would be located.   That’s where we are currently.

Now, do you really think that scale of inflation is going to drop in a dramatic inverted V formation to where the Fed projects it will end up next year (the little red line in the thing that looks like a battery)?  Pro Tip: It won’t.

The chairman even said he anticipates “strong inflation throughout next year” into 2023.

Worse still, are his remarks leading into the segment where he talks about inflation:

(1) Powell claims the Fed “can see no signs of weakening consumer demand“.   Who in the Sam-hell is he talking to, and how can they not see a drop in consumer demand?

(2) Perhaps worse, the Fed Chairman says almost nothing about the largest ever drop in productivity last quarter (-5%), and instead is only slightly worried that the drop in productivity is larger than the increase in wages (+3%).   Whiskey – Tango – Foxtrot.  Does this guy not have anyone on Main Street who talks to him?  If I’m an employer paying three percent more and generating five percent less, what do you think I’m about to do?

Watch his remarks from 03:23 to 05:13 of the video below (prompted), and you will see what I mean:

The key takeaway is this….

…. Take care of your family, this is only going to get worse.

16 Of Biden’s Biggest Whoppers About COVID-19 Vaccines

Here are the president's top 16 lies about the jab.

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist

It should be no surprise that President Joe Biden and his administration lied their way through the last year in the White House. As a matter of fact, The Federalist rigorously recorded more than 100 whoppers Biden and his team gladly fed the public and the corporate media. Of those dozens of lies, more than 15 of them had to do with the COVID-19 vaccine. Here are the president’s top 16 lies about the jab.

1. Biden Falsely Claimed ‘All’ Media Smeared Vaccine Plan as ‘Impossible’

Biden kicked off his time in office defending his administration’s goal to vaccinate 100 million Americans within his first 100 days in the White House after a reporter questioned whether the target was too modest.

“When I announced it, you all said it wasn’t possible. C’mon. Gimme a break, man,” Biden snapped.

A few rare articles at major publications cast skepticism on Biden’s plan, but the Democrat’s claim that “all” media had been overwhelmingly pessimistic of the Biden administration reaching the 100 million mark by the end of April proved to be false. The truth is that he was showered with praises from the press and favorable coverage from the beginning.

2. Biden’s Team Told CNN Trump Offered No Plan for Vaccine Distribution

Sources within the Biden administration told CNN they inherited no vaccine distribution plan from the previous White House.

“There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source reportedly told CNN’s MJ Lee.

There was, however, actually an explicit plan outlined in Trump’s Operation Warp Speed.

The Biden team’s statements were also contradicted by Dr. Anthony Fauci the same afternoon.

“We’re certainly not starting from scratch, because there is activity going on in the distribution,” Fauci told reporters.

3. Biden Team: Trump Vaccination Plan ‘Worse Than We Could Have Imagined’

After Biden staffers lied, telling CNN there was “nothing for us to rework” in terms of a vaccination distribution plan, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted at the podium during a Jan. 25 briefing that there was a plan — the Biden administration just wouldn’t give proper credit. Psaki told reporters that the plan from the Trump White House was “much worse than we could have imagined.”

The plan inherited by the Biden White House, however, had already put the new administration on a trajectory to reach its goal of getting 100 million people vaccinated within its first 100 days.

4. Biden Said He ‘Misspoke’ When Claiming U.S. Would Reach Only 100 Million Vaccines in 100 Days

Biden said during a Jan. 25 press conference that he “misspoke” when claiming the United States would reach only 100 million coronavirus vaccine shots given out within the administration’s first 100 days, a pace that had already been reached by the Trump administration. Biden then emphasized a hope of reaching 150 million instead.

The White House COVID-19 Response Team tweeted two days later, however, that the Biden administration’s goal of 100 million doses in 100 days hadn’t changed.

5. Kamala Harris Repeated Bogus Claim of White House Starting ‘From Scratch’ on Vaccines

Just a few weeks into the new administration, Vice President Kamala Harris joined in the administration’s lies when she repeated the bogus claim that the Biden administration had been forced to start “from scratch” to handle the coronavirus vaccine rollout.

“We’re starting from scratch,” Harris said, “on something that’s been raging for almost an entire year.”

Even Fauci rejected the assertion made by White House officials in January, as the Trump administration had already reached the 1 million-shots-a-day threshold that Biden has attempted to claim credit for.

6. Biden Claimed COVID Vaccine Wasn’t Around When He Assumed Office

During a CNN town hall on Feb. 16, Biden falsely claimed that the United States did not have a COVID-19 vaccine when he transitioned into the White House in late January.

Against faulty predictions from journalists, so-called experts, and verified Twitter users who cast doubt on Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, the first round of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was administered in the United States to health care workers in mid-December following the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use and mass distribution approval. The FDA also applied emergency authorization to the Moderna vaccine in mid-December, approving it for widespread distribution and use long before Biden joined the White House.

Biden received both doses of the Pfizer COVID vaccine before he was inaugurated.

7. Biden Lied Again About Not Inheriting a Vaccine Plan

During his visit to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing plant in mid-February, Biden once again falsely claimed that his administration did not inherit a vaccine plan from Trump.

“Just over four weeks ago, America had no real plan to vaccinate most of the country,” Biden said. “My predecessors — as my mother would say, God love ’em — failed to order enough vaccines, failed to mobilize the effort to administer the shots, failed to set up vaccine centers. That changed the moment we took office.”

8. Biden Said Goal of 100 Million Vaccine Shots in 100 Days Was Tough for Him to Meet

In a prime time address on March 11, Biden claimed his administration’s initial goal of administering 100 million shots in his first 100 days was difficult to meet.

“When I came into office, you may recall, I set a goal that many of you said was kind of way over the top,” Biden said. “I said I intended to get 100 million shots in people’s arms with my first 100 days in office.”

Again, that vaccination pace had already been met by his White House predecessor. About 1.3 million Americans were vaccinated by Biden’s first full day in office.

9. Biden Overreported Number of Vaxxed American 65 and Older

In his address on March 11, Biden lied about when the COVID-19 vaccine first became available in the United States. He also misspoke about the number of Americans 65 and older who had received the vaccine.

“When I took office 50 days ago, only 8 percent of Americans — after months — only 8 percent of those over the age of 65 had gotten their first vaccination,” Biden said. “Today that number is 65 percent.”

The vaccine, however, was not available for months before Biden took office. The first COVID-19 vaccine dose in the United States was administered on Dec. 14, just one month before the new president transitioned into the White House. Biden also lied that 65 percent of Americans 65 years old and above had been vaccinated. As of the time of his address, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that actually 62.4 percent of those 65 and older had received at least one round of the vaccine, not 65 percent.

10. Biden Claimed You Can’t Get COVID if You’re Vaccinated

During a presidential town hall hosted by CNN’s Don Lemon on July 21, Biden claimed you cannot contract COVID-19 if you’ve been fully vaccinated against the respiratory virus.

“We don’t talk enough to you about this, I don’t think,” he said. “One last thing that’s really important is, we’re not in the position where we think that any virus, including the delta virus, which is much more transmissible and more deadly in terms of unvaccinated people, the — the various shots that people are getting now cover that. You’re OK. You’re not going to — you’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.”

According to the president’s own CDC, however, this statement is patently false.

“COVID-19 vaccines are effective,” the CDC website stated. “However, a small percentage of people who are fully vaccinated will still get COVID-19 if they are exposed to the virus that causes it. These are called ‘vaccine breakthrough cases.’ This means that while people who have been vaccinated are much less likely to get sick, it will still happen in some cases. It’s also possible that some fully vaccinated people might have infections, but not have symptoms (asymptomatic infections). Experts continue to study how common these cases are.”

Other anecdotes have also shown Biden’s claim to be false. After flying to Washington, D.C., to protest an election integrity bill, at least six Texas Democrats tested positive for COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated. Moreover, staffers in the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office tested positive despite full vaccination status.

11. Biden Admin Mandated COVID Vaccines for Medical Employees Despite Pledging Not To

Biden’s Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough announced on July 26 that he would mandate COVID-19 vaccines for health care employees working in Veteran Affairs. According to the press release, “each employee will have eight weeks to be fully vaccinated” before risking termination.

In March, the White House pledged to leave vaccine passports to the “private sector.”

“We expect … that a determination or development of a vaccine passport or whatever you want to call it will be driven by the private sector,” Psaki said. “Ours will more be focused on guidelines that can be used as a basis. There are a couple key principles that we are working from: One is that there will be no centralized, universal federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential; second, we want to encourage an open marketplace with a variety of private sector companies and nonprofit coalitions developing solutions; and third, we want to drive the market toward meeting public interest goals.”

12. Biden Said There Are More Vaccinated People in the U.S. Than the American Population

Biden falsely claimed that 350 million Americans were vaccinated despite the fact that there are approximately 330 million people in the United States.

“We have roughly 350 million people vaccinated in the United States and billions around the world,” Biden confidently stated.

Moments later, he checked his notes before doubling down on the lie again.

“Well over — what’s the number again? I remind myself, 350 million Americans have already been vaccinated,” he repeated.

13. Biden Blamed COVID-19 Case Spike on Unvaccinated

Biden blamed a COVID-19 spike in September on people who haven’t received their doses of the shot.

“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Biden said in a speech, also tweeting that “people are dying and will die from COVID-19 who don’t have to.”

“If you haven’t gotten vaccinated, do it now. It could save your life and the lives of those you love,” he wrote.

By making this claim, Biden not only overlooked the fact that vaccinated people are still catching “breakthrough cases” of the virus, but he also ignored the role natural immunity plays in possibly preventing or limiting COVID reinfection.

14. Biden Said COVID Vaccine Prevents Virus Spread (Again)

The president falsely claimed in a speech justifying vaccine mandates that getting the COVID-19 vaccine prevents the spread of the virus from one person to another.

“We’re making sure health care workers are vaccinated because if you seek care at a health care facility, you should have the certainty that the people providing that care are protected from COVID and cannot spread it to you,” Biden said.

Biden’s claim is not only contradicted by the CDC, which admits that the COVID jab doesn’t prevent infection, but it is also contradicted by the countless number of breakthrough cases appearing throughout the United States, wherein vaccinated people still contract the virus and can give it to their neighbors, friends, family, and coworkers.

15. Biden Pledged There Would Be No Vaccine Mandates

Biden pledged in December 2020 he would pursue no such thing as a vaccine mandate for the Wuhan coronavirus.

“I don’t think it should be mandatory,” Biden said. “I wouldn’t demand it to be mandatory.”

In office, however, Biden has been aggressive in pursuing coronavirus vaccine mandates, signing multiple for federal employees and private employers with 100 or more people on staff, which were quickly and temporarily shut down by federal courts.

16. Biden Again Implied Vaxxed People Can’t Spread COVID (They Can)

Biden still believes that people who have had the COVID shot can’t spread the virus.

“Everybody talks about freedom and not to have a shot, or have a test. Well, guess what, how about patriotism? How about making sure that you’re vaccinated so you do not spread the disease to anybody else? What about that? What’s the big deal?” Biden asked.