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MAY 29,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

GOOD NEWS FOR REPUBLICANS – FROM FOX:    Many people moving to Florida are registering as Republicans because lockdowns in blue states caused them to reevaluate being a Democrat, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Wednesday.  “So it’s interesting with Florida, like, the media at the beginning of this said, ‘Florida is bad,’ and I think it’s because they wanted to damage Trump in Florida, wanted to damage me, so they just kept saying it was bad, even though the facts didn’t say it,” he said during a town hall event on Fox News Channel’s Hannity:  "Like, literally last April, they’re saying Florida’s doing worse than New York. New York was like, ten times worse. And so I think what it did is, the people that buy those phony narratives for these media, they probably aren’t coming to Florida. But most people see through it, but the people that see through it, they think like us. And so I think a lot of these people are coming. I think they’re registering as Republicans overwhelming. And I also have come across a lot of people who quite frankly were Democrats.
The lockdowns turned them into Republicans because they say ‘I cannot fathom,’ people say, ‘I was a Democrat because of education, and I’m in California and they’re locking my kids out of school. I come to Florida, they’re in school, people are free, people are happy.’ So I think this whole process has caused some people to reevaluate some of their prior commitments. And if you have a political party that puts the interests of teachers unions over the interests of kids being able to just access an education at all, that tells you all you need to know about the modern Democrat party."  Governor DeSantis has done an outstanding job, and we hope that will put Florida solidly in the GOP column.  Governor Abbott has done the same in Texas, and we hope that state, too, is now secure for our side.  There are even some indications that California may not be the sure thing for Democrats than it has been.  Miracles happen.

May 29, 2021       Permalink

AT THE CROSSROADS – OVERNIGHT:  Americans sense that we are at a crossroads in our history, a battle between the American values that made us great, and some new values that would restrict our freedoms, wreck our Constitution, and lead us into a false world of "equality" that will be achieved through mediocrity.  An eminent historian shows us how our children must be prepared for this battle.  From the New York Post: 

We live in anxious times. But many times in our past were far more anxious, and the reasons for anxiety then were more compelling. Consider, for example, the situation facing the world in the early months of 1941, when Hitler’s triumphant armies controlled continental Europe, when only the British Isles managed to hold out and when the future of liberty looked very dim.

Yet at that moment, the novelist John Dos Passos wrote: “In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present.” Dos Passos urged that we look backward to a past that could be a source of sanity and direction, a lifeline of sustenance and instruction. Such training of the mind and memory ought to be at the core of an education for democratic citizenship.

We neglect an essential element in the formation of citizens when we fail to supply young people with a full, accurate, and responsible account of their own country. The evidence of that failure is overwhelming. In fact, the most recent test administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes called The Nation’s Report Card, shows continuing decline in (already-low) history and geography scores and flatlining in civics scores.

We must recommit ourselves to the teaching of both history and civics — and to the recognition that the two belong together. Something more needs attending to in the work of civic education, too. Tracking scores on standardized tests can provide useful, if limited, data about the state of our historical knowledge. But the scores cannot tell us about the depth and quality of that knowledge or the extent to which those who possess it feel a genuine and living connection to it. 

The word “citizenship” has lost much of the noble luster that it once had, just as “civics” has wound up demoted to a kind of “user’s guide” to the machinery of government. Both words deserve better. Citizenship is not merely about voting but also about felt membership in a society of civic equals.
Civic education, rightly understood, extends far beyond how a bill becomes a law. It should promote a vivid and enduring sense of our belonging to one of the greatest enterprises in human history. Hence a civic education should be an initiation not only into a canon of ideas but into a community; and not just a community of the present but also a community of memory.

The word “citizenship” has lost much of the noble luster that it once had. It’s not merely about voting but also about felt membership in a society of civic equals.

Ultimately, a patriotic education should be an education in love. This love must be embraced freely and be unsentimental enough to coexist with the elements of disappointment, criticism, dissent, opposition and even shame that come with moral maturity and open eyes.

Without the deep foundation that this love supplies, a republic will perish.

COMMENT:  Please read the rest and pass it on to others.  This is one of the best essays I've read on the need to teach children far more history and understanding of freedom than we do today.

At the end of World War II in Europe, General Eisenhower marched American soldiers through Hitler's concentration camps.  He said that our men might not know what they'd been fighting for, but this would show them what they'd been fighting against.  Today, fortunately, there are no death camps to teach our men and women what they are against.  But we must insist that they know what they are for. 

May 29, 2021       Permalink 

MAY 28,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

JERK, SON OF JERKS – FROM AMERICAN THINKER:    Apparently, all would be paradise in crime-pit San Francisco if it weren't for all those lazy, racist cops who are persecuting poor, heroic, Chesa Boudin, the city's leftist do-nothing district attorney.  That's the word from young Chesa, stepson of Bill Ayers, son of a terrorist convicted of killing a black cop, and former Hugo Chavez advisor, who's suddenly found himself unpopular in the city and facing a voter recall.According to KPIX5 CBS of San Francisco, (hat tip: LegalInsurrection.com):  "District Attorney Chesa Boudin claimed Sunday that placing blame on his prosecutors for crime in San Francisco’s neighborhoods is miscast and should be focused on the police officers union and a poor clearance rate of crimes that are reported to police."   The guy was brought into existence by 1960s radicals.  He hasn't learned a thing.  Only in ultra-left San Francisco could he be elected to any office.  I hope the more mature locals throw him out.

THIS MUST BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY – FROM DAILY MAIL:   An explosive new study claims that Chinese scientists created COVID-19 in a Wuhan lab, then tried to cover their tracks by reverse-engineering versions of the virus to make it look like it evolved naturally from bats.  The paper's authors, British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen, wrote that they have had 'prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China' for a year - but were ignored by academics and major journals.  Dalgleish is a professor of oncology at St George's University, London, and is best known for his breakthrough creating the first working 'HIV vaccine', to treat diagnosed patients and allow them to go off medication for months.
Sørensen, a virologist, is chair of pharmaceutical company, Immunor, which developed a coronavirus vaccine candidate called Biovacc-19. Dalgleish also has share options in the firm.   The shocking allegations in the study include accusations of 'deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data' at Chinese labs, and it notes the silencing and disappearance of scientists in the communist country who spoke out.   Our so-called press is now rushing to catch up to the evidence, having laughed at it when Donald Trump was in the White House.  The next walk-back should involve climate change, where scare tactics have gone way beyond the evidence to create a crisis that doesn't exist.  But a few will get rich on it.

May 28, 2021        Permalink

A GOOD COURT DECISION, AND MAY THERE BE MANY MORE – AT 7:50 P.M.   The Sixth Circuit hands down a decision that points us in the right direction, but the battle for American values is far from over.  From Trending Politics: 

The Biden administration has sought to racialize the COVID-19 pandemic response, including a restaurant aid program within the American Rescue Plan. A judge just ruled that isn’t going to fly.

The ruling comes by way of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case Antonio Vittolo vs. Isabella Casillas Guzman. Guzman’s lawsuit argued that white men are being ‘pushed to the back of the line’ for aid in the coronavirus relief program. The lawsuit was directed at U.S. Small Business Association Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman by Antonio Vitolo, who is the owner of Jake’s Bar and Grill in Harriman, Tennessee. A majority 2-1 decision found that Biden’s race-based litmus test for aid is not legal.

“This case is about whether the government can allocate limited coronavirus relief funds based on the race and sex of the applicants,” Judge Thapar ruled. “We hold that it cannot.”

“The Small Business Administration has injected explicit racial and ethnic preferences into the priority process,” the ruling continued. “Under a regulation that predates the pandemic, the agency presumes certain applicants are socially disadvantaged based solely on their race or ethnicity. Groups that presumptively qualify as socially disadvantaged—and thus get to jump to the front of the line for priority consideration—include ‘Black Americans,’ ‘Hispanic Americans,’ ‘Asian Pacific Americans,’ ‘Native Americans,’ and ‘Subcontinent Asian Americans.’ If you are in one of these groups, the Small Business Administration assumes you qualify as socially disadvantaged. Indeed, the only way not to qualify is if someone comes forward ‘with credible evidence to the contrary’.”
As the SBA’s funding proceeded past the initial emergency funding phase, it continued to implement racial and sexual bias in its decisions.

“There is an obvious solution to this of course: The agency can simply fund grants in the order they were received—without regard to priority status, and without regard to the processing head start that many applications received on the basis of race and sex,” the ruling noted.

Remarkably, Judge Thapar held that “the government offers little evidence of past intentional discrimination against the many groups to whom it grants preferences. Indeed, the schedule of racial preferences detailed in the government’s regulation—preferences for Pakistanis but not Afghans; Japanese but not Iraqis; Hispanics but not Middle Easterners—is not supported by any record evidence at all.”

COMMENT:  An important blow to the racialization of everything that is pushed by the left wing of the Democratic Party.  But the battle is far from won.  If the Dems don't get some of the court decisions they want, they will move to pack the Supreme Court with leftist hacks, who will tear the Constitution apart.

May 28, 2021       Permalink