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DECEMBER 27-28,  2022

I WAS DELIGHTED TO LEARN, ON ELECTION NIGHT, THAT MY OLD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, THE ONE I GREW UP IN, THE THIRD DISTRICT OF NEW YORK, HAD ELECTED A REPUBLICAN.  Now, I'm not so delighted.  Turns out the elected "Republican" is actually a professional liar.  He lied about his entire background.  From Fox: 

Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y., who flipped a hotly-contested congressional seat on the edge of New York City, responded to criticism of misleading or fabricated items on his resume in a contentious interview on Fox News Tuesday, insisting he is not a "fraud" or a "fake."

Santos has come under fire for claims he graduated from Manhattan's Baruch College, his connection to Judaism and work in the financial sector. He defeated Robert Zimmerman, a longtime Democratic activist who has also appeared on Fox News in the past, as the two vied for outgoing Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi's seat encompassing part of Nassau County and northeastern Queens.

On "Tucker Carlson Tonight," former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who was guest-hosting for Tucker Carlson, grilled Santos on the claims and whether the voters in New York's 3rd Congressional district should be able to trust the person they elected.

Gabbard asked Santos what the term "integrity" means to him in light of the revelations, to which the congressman-to-be replied it means to carry oneself "in an honorable way." He repeated admitting to making a mistake.

"I think humans are flawed, and we all make mistakes, Tulsi," he said. "I think we can all look at ourselves in the mirror and admit that once in our life we made a mistake. I'm having to admit this on national television for the whole country to see. And I have the courage to do so because I believe that in order to move past this and move forward and be an effective member of Congress, I have to face my mistakes, and I'm facing them."

Santos said he nonetheless remains committed to the issues he campaigned on this year, saying he is "not a fraud" and worked "damn hard to get where I got my entire life."
In response, Gabbard said integrity does mean carrying oneself with honor but also indicates commitment to the truth.

"[I]f I were one of those in New York's third district right now, now that the election is over and I'm finding out all of these lies that you've told… my question is, do you have no shame?" Gabbard asked.

COMMENT:  This was no simple "mistake."  Santos, if that is his name, lied about where he went to school, his professional record, even his religion, claiming that his parents were Holocaust survivors.  I know that some people on our side are saying that, yes, this is wrong, but that Democrats have gotten away with such lies for years.  We recall how Elizabeth Warren built her career around a Native American heritage that never existed.   We recall Dem Senator Richard Blumenthal lying about his military record.  And we certainly know that Joe Biden has, over his career, embellished virtually everything he's ever done.  One fib after another.  Always given a pass by an obedient press.  And, oh yes, Hillary Clinton never was under fire in a war zone.  But, whatever.

And yet, I have to believe that cynicism has its limits.  Yes, life is unfair.  The media has covered for the sins of its liberal pals.  But I do feel we must be better, and say out loud that we are.  This man Santos should be expelled from the Republican Party.  It is rumored that Kevin McCarthy may need Santos's vote to become speaker.  I think McCarthy should say right now that he doesn't want that vote, that he won't accept it, and that anyone who would is unfit to serve as speaker.  What do the anti-Kevin holdouts say to that?  I think we'd be hailing Speaker McCarthy.

We've been here before.  In the 1950s a Republican congressman from Utah, Douglas Stringfellow, was running for his second term.  He had been elected the first time on his claim that he'd been a war hero, a recipient of the Silver Star, wounded in action, and the sole survivor of a secret mission.  It suddenly became known during his campaign for re-election that none of this was true.  The Republican Party immediately demanded that he withdraw as a candidate and named another man to take his place.  That was the right thing to do.  The replacement candidate won.

I guess we're just in a different age. 

December 28, 2022       Permalink   

ARE WE APPROACHING A NUMBER OF BREAKING POINTS IN THE "CRISIS" OF EDUCATION?  I don't like the word "crisis."  It's overused.  But I do think we can safely use it in describing the overall crisis in American education.  Rarely do we find an area in which so many components have gone so wrong so quickly.

In his race for governor of Virginia, Republican Glenn Youngkin made a parents' revolt against failing schools the centerpiece of his campaign, and flipped Virginia red.  He hit a sensitive political nerve, and voters responded.

But the crisis in education involves much more than state-run public schools.  It was first publicly identified, as early as the 1980s, in colleges and universities, where students who thought they were getting a first-class liberal arts education found they were getting a lifetime dose of racial division, topped by a generous serving of anti-Americanism.  That has gotten much worse.

Now we are seeing a serious increase in speeches and articles dramatically questioning the investment that families make in "higher" education.  The market is starting to work.  From Fox: 

The exorbitant costs of attending college sets students up for failure — and higher education is often a "scam" and unnecessary in some fields, a writer and researcher on market influences and monopolies said.

"I think that the financial aspects of college or higher education have overwhelmed the ability to create a citizenry on a very basic level," Matt Stoller, a research director at the American Economic Liberties Project, told Fox News. "This is kind of like a slow-burning crisis that we have to look into."

The average cost of going to a private college — including tuition, fees, books and room and board — went from $2,930 per year in 1971 to $51,690 in 2021, according to data from the nonprofit group College Board. Nearly a third of parents and students believe that college is overpriced, according to a recent Sallie Mae and Ipsos study.

"The Columbia Journalism School is sort of in an existential crisis because they have a nine-month degree that costs $120,000 and they're like, ‘Are we the problem?’" Stoller said.

"Yeah, you guys are the problem. You're not the only problem. You're more of a symptom."
Stoller also sees elite institutions' high prices as a moneymaking scheme.

"There is a scam there," he told Fox News. "I haven't been able to figure out what that scam is."

"That's what's causing this problem," he added.

Undergraduate enrollment declined by over 650,000 students — more than 4% — from the spring of 2021 to 2022, according to a report by the National Student Clearinghouse.

"I think that schooling exists to make citizens and to build a moral, self-governing society. Also, it's there to let you get a job and build a life," Stoller said. "I think that we're falling down on all counts of that, and we have to look at why that is."

Colleges are "such a mess in terms of administrative bloat" and are "saddling people with a lot of debt," he added. "You can't come out of a school with lots of debt and be a good citizen — you are now a dependent of someone else."

Stoller also questioned the necessity of some degrees, like journalism. The high cost associated with journalism school, he said, "shows that it's just a credentialing mechanism for a social class more than it is like a practical way to think about free expression in a democracy."

COMMENT:  Many are actively questioning the value of the bachelor's degree.  Is it really needed?  Is much of value taught by over-politicized "professors"?  Would most students be better off going into career training or apprenticeships? 

Those questions were once rarely asked.  Now they are becoming routine.  I'll be on the lookout for developments in this area.  Don't be shocked if some colleges close or others cut whole departments.  Already, many history departments are being abolished.

A revolution is in the air.

December 27-28, 2022       Permalink

DECEMBER 25-26,  2022

NO HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD:  The financial results for Hollywood in 2022 are in.  They tough and revealing.  Maybe it's true that getting woke means going broke.  From Breitbart: 

For Hollywood, 2022 was truly an annus horribilis.

Major studios, streamers, cable providers, and other media giants lost a combined $542 billion in market value in 2022, with left-wing studios the Walt Disney Co., Netflix, and Comcast accounting for the bulk of the bloodshed.

The Dow Jones Media Titans index, which tracks the performance of 30 of the world’s biggest media companies, shed 40 percent this year, with its total market value declining from $1.35 trillion to $808 billion, according to a Financial Times report.

The losses outpaced indices for other sectors, including banking, which saw a 14.5 percent drop for the year, and telecommunications, which fell by 11.2 percent.

Hollywood’s horrible year was the result of a one-two punch of a downturn in the streaming market coupled with consumers continuing to cut the cord by the millions. In addition, the advertising market has cratered as households cut spending as the costs of essentials like food and energy continue to skyrocket due to President Joe Biden’s disastrous economic policies.

Woke companies paid the highest price in 2022.

Disney — once an invincible brand and iconic American company– saw its stock plummet more than 40 percent this year as the company faces weak profitability for the foreseeable future, prompting the firing of CEO Bob Chapek and the return of old CEO Bob Iger.

Disney, whose stock is on course for its worst year since 1974, spent 2022 embracing radical LGBTQ activism and waging a calamitous political war with Florida Gov. Rob DeSantis (R) over the state’s anti-grooming Parental Rights in Education Law.

Netflix experienced an unprecedented two consecutive quarters of subscriber losses this year, which resulted in layoffs and cost-cutting across the board. For the year, the stock is down more than 50 percent.

Other big losers include Paramount Global, whose stock has dropped more than 40 percent, and Warner Bros. Discovery — the parent company of CNN — whose stock has tumbled more than 60 percent.

Leftist Hollywood continues to deliver woke dud after woke dud…and it's awesome to see their profits cratering as a result. https://t.co/m92ofruh6N
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 2, 2022

Comcast — the parent of NBC and MSNBC, as well as Universal — is down more than 30 percent for the year.

“It’s been a perfect storm of bad news,” Michael Nathanson, media analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson, told the FT. “I’ve been covering this sector a long time and I’ve never seen such a bad collection of data points before.”

COMMENT:  Another problem is that woke movies, planned two years ago, are still in the pipeline.  They will likely fail spectacularly.  Maybe Hollywood will learn that people don't go to the movies to be insulted or told how terrible they are.  They go to be entertained.

December 26, 2022       Permalink 

NEWSOM THE CHAMP, AT LEAST IN SOMETHING:  The California governor wishes to be president.  He has a record to run on.  He'd be advised to bury it.  From Frontpage: 

The escape from New York and California, not to mention Illinois, continues.

California’s population continues to dwindle. The state’s population declined by 114,000 people from about 39,143,000 in 2021 to 39,029,000 in 2020, new estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau show.

At this rate, California will fall out of the 39 million category giving it its lowest population since 2015.

It marks the third straight year that California has reported a loss.

Gov. Newsom took office in 2019. That’s a population loss for every full year that he’s been in office since.

That’s quite a record for an aspiring presidential candidate. Historic even.  Gov. Newsom and his merry band of harvesters accomplished what no one was able to do before. But it’s not wholly unique.

California wasn’t the only state to lose population in 2022. Data shows six of the 10 largest states in the U.S., including California, Illinois and New York, have had populations decline between 2021 and 2022. Florida and Texas had the largest population increases among large states, by 1.9% and 1.6% respectively.

The blue state model is really working. Time to celebrate with some drinks at the French Laundry.

COMMENT:  It will be unique to see a governor running for president while his constituents are running away from his state.  What does he say?  How does he explain it?  And newsfilm of the homeless in Los Angeles and San Francisco will not help matters.  I can see a race between lesser governor Newsom of California and greater Governor DeSantis of Florida.  A clear choice between failure and success.  And most of the press will probably back the lesser.

December 25-26, 2022      Permalink

DECEMBER 23-24,  2022

LET US RESOLVE TO ELIMINATE THIS STUFF IN THE NEW YEAR:  FROM CITY JOURNAL: 

For years, two administrators at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) have been withholding notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s families, most of them Asian, thus denying students the right to use those awards to boost their college-admission prospects and earn scholarships. This episode has emerged amid the school district’s new strategy of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.”

School administrators, for instance, have implemented an “equitable grading” policy that eliminates zeros, gives students a grade of 50 percent just for showing up, and assigns a cryptic code of “NTI” for assignments not turned in. It’s a race to the bottom.

An intrepid Thomas Jefferson parent, Shawna Yashar, a lawyer, uncovered the withholding of National Merit awards. Since starting as a freshman at the school in September 2019, her son, who is part Arab American, studied statistical analysis, literature reviews, and college-level science late into the night. This workload was necessary to keep him up to speed with the advanced studies at TJ, which U.S. News & World Report ranks as America’s top school.

Last fall, along with about 1.5 million U.S. high school juniors, the Yashar teen took the PSAT, which determines whether a student qualifies as a prestigious National Merit scholar. When it came time to submit his college applications this fall, he didn’t have a National Merit honor to report—but it wasn’t because he hadn’t earned the award. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation, a nonprofit based in Evanston, Illinois, had recognized him as a Commended Student in the top 3 percent nationwide—one of about 50,000 students earning that distinction. Principals usually celebrate National Merit scholars with special breakfasts, award ceremonies, YouTube videos, press releases, and social media announcements.

But not at TJ. School officials had decided to withhold announcement of the award. Indeed, it turns out that the principal, Ann Bonitatibus, and the director of student services, Brandon Kosatka, have been withholding this information from families and the public for years, affecting the lives of at least 1,200 students over the principal’s tenure of five years.

Recognition by National Merit opens the door to millions of dollars in college scholarships and 800 Special Scholarships from corporate sponsors.

I learned—two years after the fact—that National Merit had recognized my son, a graduate of TJ’s Class of 2021, as a Commended Student in a September 10, 2020, letter that National Merit sent to Bonitatibus. But the principal, who lobbied that fall to nix the school’s merit-based admission test to increase “diversity,” never told us about it. Parents from earlier years told me that she also didn’t tell them about any Commended Student awards. One former student said he learned he had won the award through a random email from the school to a school-district email account that students rarely check; the principal neither told his parents nor made a public announcement.

COMMENT:  Please read the whole thing.  This is a disgrace and a scandal.  I don't know if any laws are being broken, but this horror calls for a major investigation.  Virginia is now governed by Republican Glenn Youngkin, who ewas elected largely by the parents' revolt against mediocrity and wokism in education.  I would expect that Youngkin will be heard from on this monstrosity.

You look at this mess and say to yourself, "This is how nations die."  We are being warned,

December 24, 2022       Permalink

OH, I'M SO GLAD THEY DECIDED TO TELL US THIS:  From WBBM:

With a winter storm bearing down on the Midwest, Triple A has some advice for motorists, including drivers of electric vehicles.

It’s common sense to a lot of drivers in the Chicago area, but it bears repeating: If you must venture out during a winter storm, keep an emergency kit in your car. It should include items like your cell phone, jumper cables, food, water, blankets, hats and kitty litter or sand in case you get stuck in snow and need traction.

And for owners of electric vehicles, says Molly Hart, spokesperson for AAA, the auto club group, be advised that cold weather decreases your driving range almost by half.

“When it dips to 20 degrees and the HVAC system is being used to heat the inside of the vehicle, the average driving range is decreased by 41 percent,” Hart says.

That means instead of getting 100 miles of combined urban and highway driving, the range at 20 degrees would be reduced to 59 miles.

COMMENT:  How long have we been told that electric cars are the future?  And just now the AAA is telling us how miserable they are in the cold?  Did the government know?  Did Kamala Harris know? 

I'm sure some people in the great journalism universe knew, but why damage the green dream by telling the public?

The green dream increasingly seems like the green nightmare.   Too many asterisks.  Too many explanations.

December 23, 2022       Permalink