There IS A CHANCE Fascist Dems Might NOT SCORE IRREGULAR VOTES THIS NOVEMBER!

August 26, 2022

The Senate is Very Much in Play for the GOP

By J. Robert Smith at American Thinker:

Corporate media is at it again, shilling for Democrats. The spin heading toward Labor Day is that Republican chances of winning a Senate majority are fading.  A GOP takeover of the U.S. House hangs by a thread.  Nonsense.  In fact, Republicans are going to win a House majority and have a good shot of doing the same in the Senate. 

Of course, there are no guarantees — life is like that — but swallowing Mitch McConnell’s trash talk is foolish.  McConnell is dissing some Republican Senate candidates as low quality.  Mitch is being sly. 

McConnell is a notorious inside player with practically zero feel for voter sentiment (McConnell went to D.C. as an intern in 1964.  The Swamp is in his blood).  Old Man Mitch wants a GOP caucus he can control.  Add Trump-endorsed senators to the mix and McConnell may face unwanted challenges to his leadership.  McConnell, like most pols, is about power and money.  Mitch doesn’t want the applecart upset with more Trump loyalists in his caucus.          

Right-thinking Americans should be hopeful about the GOP capturing the Senate.    

Campaigns don’t gear up until after Labor Day.  Most voters don’t start focusing on politics until summer ends and kids are back in school.  Horse race numbers before Labor Day are sketchy and the pastime of the political class. 

Midterm contests are about to begin in earnest, and voters have plenty of reasons to go the GOP’s way.

Have you seen Joe Biden’s favorable/unfavorable numbers lately? 

As of this writing, Real Clear Politics’ job approval average for Biden shows the president underwater by 14.4%.  41.2% of voters approve Joe’s abysmal performance, while 55.6% sensibly disapprove.   

But get a load of these RCP averages for Biden’s handling of… the economy (35.6% approve/61% disapprove)… crime (36.7% approve/58.7% disapprove)… “immigration” — meaning the border (34% approve/57.5% disapprove)   

What do you think?  Do Biden’s wretched numbers bode well or ill for Democrat candidates running in even marginally competitive states and districts?     

How about the direction of the country?  That’s right track/wrong track numbers.

Again, the RCP average: Right Track: 23.4%.  Wrong Track: 70.4%.  That’s a whopping 47% gap in perceptions. 

With less than one out of every four Americans believing the country is a-okay, how does that help ruling Democrats?  Do such bleak numbers make Democrats feel more or less confident about their election prospects?  

Biden’s job approval numbers have been underwater for months.  He’s rivaling Jimmy Carter for bragging rights as the most unpopular president in modern times.   

Why are Americans so sour about the nation’s direction?  Simple.  Their daily lives are awful, the results of the Biden administration’ and congressional Democrats’ policies and governance. 

The big three issues vexing Americans have been mentioned: the economy, crime, and the border.  Mix in government corruption for good measure.  Add Merrick Garland unleashing the FBI on Mar-a-Lago.  Add more than doubling the size of the IRS and arming its agents. 

Biden’s — not Putin’s — inflation and Biden’s — not Vlad’s — high energy costs are cutting deeply into paychecks and family budgets.  Tens of millions of Americans are struggling to pay mortgages or rents, buy groceries, and gas up cars and trucks.  Those are real world troubles. 

Voters are gearing up to throw out the rascals.  In wave elections, voters sack the governing party without sweating much about the bona fides of the challengers.  Wave elections tend to break late.  Hence, the astonishment when a wave sweeps in larger numbers of out-party candidates than expected. 

That doesn’t mean that every Democrat will lose and every Republican wins.  It means, on balance, Democrats are heading for a world of hurt.  They’re nearly slam-dunk certain to lose the U.S. House.  The GOP’s margin of victory is the question.  A 35-seat gain for Republicans is realistic despite Fox News’ absurd hedging.  Fox News claims that Republicans might win anywhere from 2-30 House seats.  Two seats?  Bull manure.      

From the Fox News report:

In those same weeks, Democrats have enjoyed a polling boost. The latest national Fox News Poll showed the Democrats and GOP tied at 41% each on the “generic ballot” question, which asked registered voters whether they would vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate in their district. Several other high-quality polls are showing similar shifts. Throughout July and August, gas prices have eased a little; the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling remained a top story; and Democrats took victory laps over computer chip manufacturing legislation and a climate, health care and tax package. It all has amounted to a late-summer swell for the left.  

What’s wrong with the Fox News analysis?  Everything.

First, Republicans traditionally trail Democrats in generic ballot polling.  The Fox poll was conducted for registered, not likely, voters.  Plenty of registered voters won’t vote.  That Republicans are tied with Democrats among registered voters prior to Labor Day should worry Democrats. 

Second, Fox mentions that “Gas prices have eased a little.”  Gas prices remain, on average, a whopping $2.00 a gallon higher today than when Trump left office.  Does anyone seriously believe average income Americans are feeling any relief by a slight dip in sky-high gas prices?                        

Third, Fox cites SCOTUS’ abortion ruling.  Will it swing elections?  Maybe in San Francisco, New York, and D.C.’s upscale suburbs.  But it won’t be the decider for hard-pressed Americans.  That includes Hispanics, Asians, and, perhaps, more blacks.        

Fourth, computer chip manufacturing legislation changes the equation for Democrats?  Can working- and middle-class voters eat computer chips?  Fill their gas tanks with them?  Pay their mortgages or rent with them?        

Finally, any Democrat-backed climate measure translates into higher energy costs.  How many Americans really trust Democrats with healthcare after having ObamaCare foisted on them?   

Look, Republicans need to pound away at the economy, crime, and border woes to persuade a lot of voters to come their way.  They can and should raise Biden’s fitness to lead.  They must discuss Biden’s and Democrats’ abuse of power.  They need only remind voters that Democrats are going to sic the IRS on them.    

What about Democrats rigging elections?  Depends on the state.  States like Georgia and Wisconsin have made some reforms.  Other states have tightened up.  Pennsylvania — an important swing state — is a concern.  Keystone State GOP lawmakers are suing to undo wide opened mail-in balloting, but that won’t matter now.  Arizona has issues, too.       

But “No Questions” mail-in balloting in Pennsylvania, and it’s potential for abuse, is a separate question from whether or not Dr. Oz can defeat John Fetterman.  Though Oz is a lackluster candidate — to Oz’s credit, he’s been indefatigable, crisscrossing Pennsylvania campaigning — he most certainly can beat Fetterman, who’s a kneejerk leftist and hampered by a recent stroke.  Trafalgar Group has Fetterman up by only 4% as of August 18.  Again, we’ll need to see polling post-Labor Day to get a truer read.           

Nonetheless, the GOP has good shots at converting Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire.  Arizona and Pennsylvania are tougher gets, in part, for the reasons mentioned.  Ron Johnson is always underrated in Wisconsin.  Ohio should go to J.D. Vance.  Budd wins North Carolina.  Worth watching: Colorado.  It may be a surprise GOP conversion.          

Got it: Republicans have no killer instinct.  They possess an exquisite capacity for tripping over their own feet.  Yes, election rigging could tip against the GOP.  Other unknowns could influence outcomes.  But Republicans may be swept into congressional majorities despite themselves.  Believe it or not, it happens. 

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.               

“Brainless” Is Unprepared For………”ever”!

Axios: Biden and team stunningly unprepared for their trillion-dollar Academia bailout

ED MORRISSEY Aug 26, 2022 at HotAir:

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

After nearly two years of talking about it, Joe Biden finally rolled out his student-loan forgiveness plan … and apparently nothing else. According to Axios, the White House didn’t bother to gather the data on eligibility, didn’t create a system which would check it, and has no system yet in place to fully complete the process.

Did Biden drop the ball again — or did he never expect to be allowed to run with it in the first place?

The agency doesn’t have income data for most of the 43 million Americans eligible for forgiveness, meaning around 35 million people — including Pell Grant recipients — will have to attest that they makes less than $125,000 per year and apply for relief. …

StudentAid.gov, the government’s financial aid website, experienced significant delays Wednesday and Thursday after it was inundated with people seeking information on loan forgiveness.

The White House doesn’t know exactly how many eligible borrowers will actually end up applying for loan forgiveness — or how much it will cost.

The Education Department hasn’t yet released the website where people can apply for loan forgiveness by attesting that they meet the income requirement — and it’s still unclear when that will be released, a person familiar with the matter tells Axios.

Other than that, y’know … Biden was totes prepared to roll out this policy. I mean, why not wing it? The executive-order-driven policy will only cost between $605 billion and $1 trillion, most of which will land in this fiscal year while inflation’s already raging. No biggie!

More seriously, this looks like a lot of Joe Biden’s policymaking — impulsive, unprepared, and entirely reactive. Biden and his team have had seventeen months to get these pieces in place for this policy decision. Instead, it looks like someone just pulled together a few talking points at the last minute and bundled it into a memo for Biden to wave at a presser.

Just how lazy was the White House on this massive bailout proposal? Penn Wharton managed to pull its numbers together in just a couple of days after Biden’s specifics were made public. Biden’s team didn’t even bother to try scoring it themselves or providing any data. Instead, they pulled an initial rough estimate of $330 billion out of their nether regions, likely because it also roughly matched the deficit reduction from the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed a couple of weeks ago. As Axios reports, they still haven’t bothered to figure this out, and they let themselves get caught with their pants down on the true potential cost of Biden’s proposal and have other sources drive that number.

Which again prompts the question: did they expect that this would never get implemented? Even for dilettantes like Biden and his team, this is extraordinarily offhand and casual. The only rational explanation for the utter carelessness and casual abuse of power this represents — well, the only other rational explanation besides it being Biden’s standard operational procedure — is that it’s only meant as a political stunt for the midterms. The legal justification given for it is so absurd — an emergency measure for a pandemic that the White House just got done arguing at the Supreme Court is no emergency any longer — that it’s certain to get stopped by a federal court as long as plaintiffs with supportable standing emerge to challenge it.

Biden and his team have been stubbornly ignorant on similar disputes over executive authority in emergencies such as their eviction moratoria, so this fits a pattern. After that, though, even Biden has to know that the courts will block this for months if not entirely, without Congress’ approval on this level of spending. Maybe they’re counting on that, hoping to get a short-term boost to their political standing among progressives while wasting everyone else’s time in court … and ultimately stiffing the students who got stiffed by colleges and universities in Academia’s scam.

Or maybe Biden really is this stupidly authoritarian and incompetent. I’m not sure which is worse, but neither will help Biden politically in the long run.

Update: I added “trillion-dollar” to the headline for, ahem, clarity.

That Zuckerberg Appears Again!

August 26, 2022

Don’t allow Mark Zuckerberg to reinvent history

By Rajan Laad

Just yesterday Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook suppressed the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop following a warning from the FBI about ‘misinformation.’

Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast when he was asked about Facebook’s approach to the Hunter Biden report from October 2020.

Zuckerberg responded as follows:

“The background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us … and was like, Hey, just so you know, like you should be on high alert. … We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump … that’s similar to that. “The distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it,”

The Meta CEO contrasted Facebook’s approach with Twitter, which locked the New York Post account and banned sharing the Post article.

“So our protocol is different from Twitter. What Twitter did is…they said… you can’t share this at all. We didn’t do that. What we did was…if something is reported to us as potential misinformation…important misinformation, we also run third-party fact-checking programs because we don’t want to be deciding what’s true and false and…I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being determined whether it was false, the distribution of Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it.”

In response to a question from Rogan on whether the distribution of the story was decreased, Zuckerberg said the following:

“So you can still share it, you could still consume it. Basically, the ranking and newsfeed was a little bit less, so fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.”

When Joe Rogan asked Zuckerberg how significantly the distribution was affected, he did not give an exact figure, but said the impact was “meaningful.”

The interview is here:

Back in October 2020, The New York Post had carried myriad reports on the shady business dealings of Hunter Biden enabled by his father Joe Biden. The report referred to Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that contained emails, text messages, and financial documents which proved that Biden, as vice president, used his influence to reap large profits for his family. Hunter had left his laptop in a computer repair shop in 2020 and never came back for it.

Its contents led New York Post columnist Miranda Devine to dub it the ‘laptop from hell.’

The laptop also contained photos of drug-addled Hunter in a compromising position with a prostitute. There were messages of Hunter using racist language, and videos of him using drugs. There also was vast information about financial corruption.

Following the NY Post reports, prominent personalities on MSNBC, NBC, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, CNN, and the New York Times coordinated their efforts to discredit the story.

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Fifty-one former senior intelligence officials then signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son from the laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” NPR, which is funded by tax dollars, claimed there were “red flags” in the Post’s story.  

It was amply clear that Washington, Big Media, Big Tech, and the Deep State conspired to suppress legitimate information and launch a disinformation campaign.

A Newsbusters poll revealed that 16% of Biden voters said they would vote differently had they known of Hunter’s laptop.

This suppression of key information was obviously a blatant act of meddling in the 2020 presidential elections.

The 2016 election seemed to have been conducted relatively fairly, because this Democrat-media complex were convinced that Trump never stood a chance.

They were not taking any chances in 2020.

But that wasn’t the only meddling that occurred.

It was also revealed that Zuckerberg and his wife personally donated nearly $419 million to ‘non-partisan’ and ‘nonprofit’ originations that lobbied for universal mail-in voting. In the end, a record-breaking 64 million Americans cast their ballots by mail.

A Zuckerberg-funded organization lobbied for unmonitored private drop boxes and hired Democrat activists who infiltrated election offices and vote-counting stations. 

Zuckerberg funds were directed to specific counties in battleground states and were surgically targeted to affect the results of the election. 

Biden won 23 of 25 counties that received grants of $1 million or higher from Zuckerberg-funded organizations in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

So as Zuckerberg was telling Rogan that he was a man of probity who didn’t want to be “deciding what was true or false,” he was also manipulating elections themselves, in addition to his suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop report.

Now that the election is over and permanent damage is already done, two of the foremost Democrat mouthpieces, the New York Times and Washington Post, are attempting to salvage their reputation by admitting the laptop story was authentic.

Zuckerberg seems to be doing the same.

He is attempting to reinvent history, place the blame on the FBI and characterize himself and Facebook as reluctant and unwilling participants.

Perhaps Zuckerberg is attempting to get on the good side of the GOP who are likely to win in a landslide during the midterm elections.

But that is emphatically not true.

Zuckerberg is a staunch partisan who both personally and through Facebook interfered with the 2020 presidential elections to facilitate victory for Biden. 

The result is nation is struggling and the citizens suffering on myriad fronts due to Biden’s misgovernance.

Free and fair elections that have the complete trust of citizens are the foundation of a democracy.

The actions by Zuckerberg, big tech, the corporate media, D.C., and the deep state have eroded the public’s trust in the electoral process, and with very good reason.

It will take ages for this faith to be restored. Zuckerberg is trying to walk away from any blame in that.

Image: Screen shot from video posted by PowerfulJRE, via YouTube

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Biden’s America…

Castro businesses threaten to stop paying taxes if the city won’t do more to deal with crime and homelessness

JOHN SEXTON Aug 25, 2022

The Castro is famous as a gay neighborhood in the center of San Francisco, one that has been the scene of many protests over the decades. This month the Castro Merchant’s Association is demanding the city do more about the homeless drug addicts on the streets. The Association suggested some practical solutions to the problem but also included an or else in their letter to the city. If the situation doesn’t improve, business owners say they’ll resort to civil disobedience, i.e. they may stop paying taxes until the situation improves.

The Castro Merchants Association sent a letter to city officials on Aug. 8, urging them to “take action” because the neighborhood is “struggling.” In the letter, they said people living on the streets “regularly experience psychotic episodes” and have vandalized storefronts and harassed business owners, employees, residents and tourists.

“They need shelter and/or services and they need them immediately,” the merchants said. “Our community is struggling to recover from lost business revenue, from burglaries and never-ending vandalism/graffiti (often committed by unhoused persons) and we implore you to take action.”…

If their demands are not met, the association is threatening civil disobedience by potentially asking store owners to stop paying taxes and other city fees, said co-President Dave Karraker. He said the association hopes to form a coalition with other neighborhood groups by October to come up with a plan to demand stronger solutions from the city.

“If the city can’t provide the basic services for them to become a successful business, then what are we paying for?” Karraker told The Chronicle on Tuesday. “You can’t have a vibrant, successful business corridor when you have people passed out high on drugs, littering your sidewalk. These people need to get help.”

People don’t pay taxes for their health. They pay them in expectation of receiving basic services like clean streets and crime prevention. If the quality of services has declined to the point where businesses are being forced to close down, why should they send their last dollar to the city that abandoned them? Fox2 spoke to Terrance Alan, the other co-president of the merchants association, and he was just as adamant that the city is not doing enough for his neighborhood.

Terrance Alan is co-president of the association and owner of Flore Dispensary and Cafe Flore.

He says many shops have been targeted by vandals and his businesses’ windows have been smashed 11 times. He says there are also several dozen people in the area who have been unhoused for years, some a decade or more.

“Every day we wake up and have to help people on the street. We have to clean up feces on the street. We have to clear our people from doorways, so we can open our businesses. It’s not fair,” said Alan…

“Sometimes they do get violent,” said Deen Nasher, the Castro Smoke Shop Manager. “The city does need to take care of these people, find a place for them to stay and help businesses. When we call, they come 30-40 minutes later. You know, the police department.”

Of course there’s no point in making a threat like this if you don’t at least put on a good show of being serious. But I suspect the businesses involved don’t really want a showdown with the city. What they want is to see something change before the status quo does more damage to their livelihoods and their neighborhood. And in San Francisco making a polite request for improvement doesn’t seem to get you very far these days. So this is the equivalent of shouting from the rooftops and, so far, it seems to be working. The letter is getting lots of media attention.

The city has already said no to the group’s requests that a small number of shelter beds be set aside for the homeless in the Castro. The city says it will be opening 1,000 new shelter beds in the next three months, creating enough space for everyone who needs it. Of course one of the problems in San Francisco and elsewhere on the west coast is the significant number of homeless people who aren’t interested in going to a shelter or other services being offered. The Merchant’s Association would like to see a plan for dealing with homeless addicts who insist on staying in the streets.

Here’s a local news report from KRON 4. According to this, 21% of Castro storefronts are already vacant and the Merchant’s Association is clearly worried it’s going to get worse unless something changes.

 

PEN embraced tactics, notably demonizing opponents, lying, and twisting language that is commonplace among today’s social justice warriors…

August 26, 2022

PEN Works to Destroy Education

By Robert Weissberg at American Thinker

Controlling education is the grand prize in today’s culture wars. Why worry about elections if voters arrive at the polls fully ideologically indoctrinated? The Left has recognized this reality for decades and its long march through the institutions to control schools is now finally paying off. How else can one explain why such views as Critical Race Theory now infuse the curriculum from the earliest grades to graduate seminars in elite universities?  

While the Left has been conquering education for decades, conservatives have now finally awakened and are fighting back. The recent election for governor in Virginia and legislation in Florida, for example, illustrated what can happen when parents discover that junior is learning about his/her/them White Privilege. Meanwhile school board elections now can draw national attention.  

The Left is aware of this conservative counterattack and has predictably mobilized to crush all those insisting that education is about acquiring skills such as literacy versus knowing that the Founders were evil rich white slave-owners. The Left’s push back is an all hands-on-deck enterprise, total mobilization in military terms, to sustain its ongoing conquest of American education. Even groups that ostensibly have nothing to do with education have been conscripted to the Left’s crusade.

Such conscription is illustrated by how the venerable organization,  PEN, whose purpose is  to “Defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture” has joined the fray. This is a major mission shift since for over a century PEN had protected controversial authors from censorship, especially imprisonment in dictatorships, and it remains a prestigious free-speech organization worldwide. Now, however, it has focused on K-12 education and joined the woke army’s assault on traditional American values.

In a recent report PEN embraced tactics, notably demonizing opponents, lying, and twisting language that is commonplace among today’s social justice warriors. For the report’s authors, when a state legislature regulates school curriculum in a way antithetical to the Left agendas, it is labeled “imposing a gag order” and “an attack on education.” This “attack” may also mandate “curriculum transparency” (scare quotes in original) that permits parents to discover and then report via hotlines to state authorities what their children are being taught.

Now, if a teacher ignores the state-authorized history book for 4^th-grade civics and instead uses the anti-white 1619 Project, but is then told to stick to the stipulated curriculum, he or she is being “gagged.” Moreover, PEN tells us, this unprofessional and irresponsible classroom behavior may be punished, and could result in defunding the school. Predictably, PEN obsesses over teaching about race and, more recently, LGBT+ issues, two topics seldom part of the official curriculum. In a brilliant display of sophistry, PEN argues that teaching grade schoolers about gender fluidity and other leftish notions is just teaching “particular ideas,” as if anything can be explicated in the classroom since everything is “an idea.”

And why should PEN intervene if teachers promote social justice as opposed to the three Rs? According to the report, “As a literary and human rights organization, our chief concern is with state censorship of the free flow of ideas, and with government restrictions on the freedom to read, to learn, and to teach.” In other words, if a woke teacher gets caught proselytizing The Faith, just claim “freedom of expression,” and who can oppose “free expression”? This is an A+ in creative writing.

There is a sky-is-falling panic in the PEN report over this conservative pushback. The “gagging” of teachers is rising sharply, parents are currently filing lawsuits to enforce them, nearly all in Republican-dominated states. Proposed “gag orders” have increased 250% since 2021, thirty-six states have introduced some 137 gag-order bills in 2022, and these laws are increasingly punitive. Such limitations on the power of educators to propagate the woke faith are, ironically, interpreted to be an attack on the very idea of free inquiry necessary for democracy

The PEN report displays a profound misunderstanding of American politics. Elected legislators are being demonized for enacted laws well within their statutory authority. and then penalizing violations. Equally condemned are those with the gall to sue public officials to discover what occurs in the classroom. How dare elected officials punish those who substitute their personal political views for the required curriculum”! No doubt, leftist organization such as PEN will soon ironically denounce this conservative pushback from elected legislators as “undemocratic.”

PEN’s report also rests on shaky intellectual foundations.  Do the authors believe that anything can be taught to children since “an idea is an idea” and everything is thus “free speech,” so imposing standards is “gagging teachers”?  What if teachers promoted astrology or eugenics?  Would PEN defend them in the name of “free speech”? Try envisioning an educational system where teachers could whimsically just express personals views on any subject that entered their brain at that moment? Yet this anti-intellectual anarchy is what PEN now implicitly demands.

The PEN report also ignores how curriculum conflicts are endemic in American education and how they are settled without recourse to mendacity and demonization. In the early 19^th century, for example, Catholics in urban areas were alarmed that public schools were covertly indoctrinating their offspring into Protestantism, and so they funded their own schools that adhered to Catholic doctrine. Battles over creationism vs. Darwinian evolution have been endemic in American schools, and there is scarcely any ethnic-based interest group that has not attempted to add their history to the state-mandated curriculum. Conventional give-and-take politics works fine; no need to claim that brainwashing youngster about America’s alleged racist past is fundamental to sound pedagogy.  

Ongoing “curriculum wars” have resulted in a huge variety of public and private schools reflecting countless viewpoints. We have explicitly left-wing schools and schools for religious fundamentalists, even Afro-centric schools. If PEN and co-believers want to instruct kindergartners about sexual dysphoria, why not sponsor their own private academies and advertise for enrollees?  

Leftist organization such as PEN should be careful of what they demand. Not all outcomes may be welcomed. If teachers gained greater freedom to impose their personal woke ideology on hapless students, many parents would just jump ship to private schools or home schooling. Since these options are disproportionately available to affluent white (and Asian) parents, public education would lose funding and many public schools might decline academically. The ideological message per se might not instigate this exodus. After all, many rich whites drink the woke Kool-Aid.  Rather, replacing the standard academic pedagogy with chaotic ideological proselytizing will hardly help junior be admitted to Harvard.

There are also opportunity costs — time spent on explaining gender fluidity shortchanges genuine education. To be sure, children from affluent, education-oriented homes may survive this wasteful nonsense while poor blacks and Hispanic may now learn more about the evils of slavery. Alas, this will be “paid for” by shorting basics. Economic inequality will only grow and this inequality, when combined with what is conveyed in the “hate whites” grievance agenda, will not make for a happy America. But perhaps this is PEN’s aim — dumbed down education whose chief product is an angry radical citizenry.    

PEN might be better advised to stick to their core mission of protecting intellectual freedom, not advancing identity politics through the schools. A barely literate radicalized citizenry is unlikely to embrace intellectual freedoms that PEN members so desire.

America In PELOSI LAND!

AUGUST 25, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN CALIFORNIA, LIBERALS

HAVE LIBERALS NO SHAME?

Well, we all know the answer to that question. But I confess to being a bit shocked by this: liberals in San Francisco and Los Angeles are capitalizing on the Uvalde shootings to urge residents not to move to Texas:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1562808573717266433&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F08%2Fhave-liberals-no-shame.php&sessionId=f490e9b885281a06634e4eff728aae5a24bcdbcd&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=31f0cdc1eaa0f%3A1660602114609&width=550px

I guess we are long past the point of expecting good taste from liberals, but this crosses the line of decency.

That said, I don’t suppose the signs will have any impact. As of October 2021, nearly 700,000 Californians had relocated to Texas since 2010. The exodus continues, and there is no reason why it should slow.

The Good And The Bad!

AUGUST 25, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at Power Line:

TWO AMERICAS [UPDATED]

I think it was John Edwards who popularized the “two Americas” theme. But Edwards had the categories wrong. There really are two Americas, and we can divide them in a number of ways. For example: one America consists of those who can cope, while the other America consists of wine moms, 25-year-olds who can’t tell what sex they are, and people who can’t manage personal finances.

This reflection is prompted by the Democrats’ giveaway to people who took out loans that they can’t conveniently pay back. So, as always happens when liberalism rules, the provident are now to bail out the improvident.

The Babylon Bee headlines, wickedly: “Hard-Working Plumber Looking Forward To Paying For His Neighbor’s Gender Studies Degree.”

With Democrats proposing the mass cancellation of student debt, successful Americans around the country are really looking forward to paying taxes to relieve the debt of people who purchased expensive yet useless college degrees. One local plumbing contractor, Sam Caughorn, is really looking forward to paying the tab on his neighbor’s $89,000 gender studies degree.
***
According to studies, there are millions of white girls working at coffee shops across the country while struggling under the crushing student debt they acquired by irresponsibly obtaining college degrees that gave them no marketable job skills. Benevolent politicians have proposed transferring all the wealth from trade workers and minority business owners to help indebted white girls with their student loans so they can still afford their daily latte and cat food expenses.

Local gender studies major Amber White is looking forward to having all her debt forgiven, thanks in part to the contributions of plumbers like Sam Caughorn. “I’m so thankful for the generosity of our Democrat leaders!” she said. “They really look out for the little folx. Also, down with capitalism and white men!”

And now the kicker:

According to sources, Sam Caughorn owns a successful business he started right after high school. He also has 5 kids, a nice house, and serves as a deacon at his church. “I guess I can spare some change for poor disadvantaged girls like Amber,” he said.

Maybe being a liberal could officially be recognized as making you a special needs person.

The Babylon Bee is satire, but these days it is hard for satire to keep up with reality. Thus we have this tweet by someone who runs a podcasters’ event:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1562765174742073344&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F08%2Ftwo-americas.php&sessionId=ebe2a45f7712c0015925206542ce93806422192c&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=31f0cdc1eaa0f%3A1660602114609&width=550px

The “harm done” by the presence of Ben Shapiro. Eek! This is the half of America that can’t cope. The same source followed up with this:

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?creatorScreenName=powerlineUS&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&features=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&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1562765176239099905&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2022%2F08%2Ftwo-americas.php&sessionId=ebe2a45f7712c0015925206542ce93806422192c&siteScreenName=powerlineUS&theme=light&widgetsVersion=31f0cdc1eaa0f%3A1660602114609&width=550px

“The weight of that decision is now painfully clear.” Ben Shapiro violated what otherwise must have been a uniformly conformist space. Our apologies to all who suffered trauma from his proximity.

Two Americas: those who can cope vs. the walking wounded. You might think it would be a mismatch, but sadly, there are more in the latter category than, just a few years ago, one could possibly have imagined.

UPDATE: The Daily Wire reveals the incalculable damage done by Ben Shapiro’s attending the Podcast Movement show. Kudos to the brave libs who survived Shapiro’s reign of terror:….