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MARCH 20, 2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

ANOTHER GREAT MOMENT IN EDUCATION – FROM THE NEW YORK POST: A school district in Colorado has plans to do away with valedictorian awards at its high schools.
Starting with the class of 2026, the Cherry Creek School District in western Arapahoe County, Colorado, will not give special recognition to students who have earned the highest grade-point average in their class at graduations, according to FOX 31 Denver KDVR. The school district notified parents about the ceremonial change in a recent newsletter, the local news station reported.
The newsletter said faculty have found the tradition no longer appropriate for their students. 
“The practices of class rank and valedictorian status are outdated and inconsistent with what we know and believe of our students,” said the letter, which is dated March 9, 2022. “We believe all students can learn at high levels, and learning is not a competition.” Instead of having the highest-ranking student deliver a graduation farewell address, the Cherry Creek School District will acknowledge academic achievements “through various other ways,” including an honor roll, GPA honor cords at graduation, and department- and school-specific award ceremonies.The letter claims the Cherry Creek School District consulted local schools, colleges and universities in Colorado to ensure its decision to eliminate valedictorian distinction does not harm students in admission processes.  Look, valedictorian awards are not absolutely necessary for schools, but why do I get the feeling that the real motive here is to glorify mediocrity? The left controls the schools and the left hates excellence.  The world isn't buying what these "modern" schools are selling, but their students won't know it until they find themselves unequal to the world's challenges.

March 20, 2022     Permalink

THE WAR TALK IS GETTING FRIGHTENING – OVERNIGHT: As the Ukraine war heats up, and casualties rise, the language of the conflict is also reaching the boiling point. Horrible conflicts usually begin with words. From Fox:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of a third world war if peace talks with Russia fail during a television interview that aired Sunday.

Zelenskyy said that "any format" should be used in order to have a possibility of negotiating with Russia, in particular Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I think that we have to use any format, any chance in order to have a possibility of negotiating, possibility of talking to Putin. But if these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third World War," Zelenskyy said.

"If there is just 1 percent chance for us to stop this war, I think that we need to take this chance, we need to do that," he added.

The president of Ukraine also said that without negotiations, he does not believe the war will end.

"I am ready for negotiations with him. I was ready over the last two years, and I think that without negotiations, we cannot end this war," Zelenskyy said during the interview with CNN.

In terms of negotiations, Zelenskyy said that he would not give up territorial integrity and Ukraine's sovereignty.

"There are compromises for which we cannot be ready as an independent state. Any compromises related to our territorial integrity and our sovereignty and the Ukrainian people have spoken about it — they have not greeted Russian soldiers with a bunch of flowers, they have greeted them with bravery, they have greeted them with weapons in their hands," he said.

COMMENT:  There are rumors of peace talks, but what is there to talk about? The Russian attacks of the last few days have been the worst of the war. Many Ukrainian sites that have been hit
no doubt hold bodies that have not yet been recovered. It is clear that Russia is engaged in mass murder.  Meanwhile, the Biden administration, supposedly the leader of the free world, has very little to say. We did get a glimpse of the president riding a bike this weekend, but nothing else. No one seems terribly bothered by Ukraine.  We wonder where Kamala Harris is. If you see her, tell her to write.

The president will be attending an "emergency" meeting of NATO in Brussels this week. The world will want to know whether the United States has anything to say. They may start looking elsewhere for leadership.

March 20, 2022      Permalink 

MARCH 19, 2022

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

TAKE THAT, VLADIMIR PUTIN! – FROM POLITICO:   The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last week quietly renamed its “Russian Lounge” — a room featuring the country’s art and culture paid for by one of its richest men, Vladimir Potanin — amid a backlash against Russia since the invasion of Ukraine.  In 2011, Potanin donated $5 million to the Kennedy Center. He paid to remodel the existing “Golden Circles Lounge” to create a meeting room reflecting the aesthetic of his native country. It included two new pieces of art commissioned by famed Russian artist Valery Koshlyakov.  The space reopened this week under the name “Opera House Circles Lounge.” “Circles” refers to a high-level group of donors to the Kennedy Center. The lounge will be used as an event space, meeting room, and private lounge for those donors.  Kennedy Center spokesperson Eileen Andrews said that there was a term limit on the branding of the lounge, but separately referenced the war in Ukraine as a factor in the renaming.  “The naming period for the Lounge has now ended,” Andrews said in a statement. “Due to the tragedy in Ukraine, the Kennedy Center and the [Potanin] Foundation have mutually agreed to no longer use the name Russian Lounge.”  Potanin, who has been closely tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin, stepped down from the board of trustees of the Guggenheim Museum, the New York Times reported on March 2. Well, that's that. The final blow against the Kremlin. When you've lost the lounge at the Kennedy Center, you've lost the world. It's the same as not being invited to a Georgetown party. Ah, victory!

March 19, 2022     Permalink

REPUBLICANS ALIVE, DEMS NOT SO MUCH – OVERNIGHT: Have you noticed that it is Congressional Republicans who are leading the American response to Ukraine?  The Biden administration seems to want a vacation from the whole thing.   From the Washington Times:

Senate Republicans are proposing U.S. sanctions against China should it provide a financial safe haven to Russian firms.

Officials in Washington have grown concerned that Beijing will entertain Moscow’s requests for economic and military support for Russia’s war on Ukraine, prompting a two-hour call between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday in which Mr. Biden warned of “consequences if China provided material support for Russia as it prosecutes its brutal war in Ukraine.”

A key area of concern, according to Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida and Todd Young of Indiana, is the potential for Chinese financial institutions to provide payment processing alternatives for Russian firms that have been barred through sanctions from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) — the financial messaging system considered to be the global standard.

Legislation introduced by the lawmakers this week would impose sanctions on Chinese banks that process transactions with Russian firms through Beijing’s alternative payment system known as the Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) or through the Russian System for Transfer of Financial Messaging (SPFS).

“We cannot allow China to become a safe haven for Russian firms seeking to avoid international sanctions,” Mr. Rubio said. “My bill would make it nearly impossible for Chinese banks to access the U.S. financial system if they choose to transact with Russian banks using Chinese or Russian financial messaging systems. It is a powerful and desperately needed disincentive to keep the Chinese Communist Party from deepening its ties with the Kremlin and undermining international efforts to punish Vladimir Putin.”

The bill would specifically freeze any U.S.-based accounts connected to any Chinese financial institutions that facilitate any transactions for Russian firms using CIPS or SPFS.
Following Friday’s call between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi, White House officials declined to spell out specific penalties the administration was prepared to levy against China should it provide aid to Russia. Officials also did not say if China had decided whether to offer any assistance to Russia.

In its readout of the call, the Chinese government said Mr. Xi stressed the role the U.S. and China must play together in ensuring world peace and said Beijing was pushing for an end to the fighting in Ukraine.

“The Ukraine crisis is not something we want to see,” Mr. Xi told Mr. Biden, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Nonetheless, China has used the period of destabilization to reassert its influence on the global stage.

“It’s in their best interest that this fight draws on, and creates divisions within the West,” said Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Brent Sadler.

“It’s also financially not in China‘s best interest to help the United States right now, because they want to create another alternative to SWIFT financing, and they want to create a yuan-based economy,” he added. “The best time is right now, so it doesn’t make any sense for the Chinese to be helpful.”

The shakeup posed by China extends beyond payment processing and reverberates beyond Russia.

On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia was in talks with Beijing to begin pricing some of its oil in yuan, a move that would result in a clear blow to the dollar’s dominance in the global energy markets and a boost to Chinese currency’s standing.

The announcement comes the week after the Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi officials declined to take a call from Mr. Biden as the White House worked to contain the surge in oil prices after Russia invaded Ukraine.

“They want to dethrone the dollar,” said Arthur Dong, a strategy and economics professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. “They’ve been trying to do this for you know, going on decades now, but they’ve had no success in doing so. Now that we have indications that one of the world’s largest oil producers, Saudi Arabia, wants to diversify its basket of currencies by accepting the yuan for the payment of their oil, in terms of the potential economic threat to the United States, this is quite serious.”

Mr. Dong described the current state of global affairs as a “game of three-dimensional chess,” which could upend the U.S.’s global standing.

COMMENT: The administration's response to the entire Ukraine crisis is sluggish at best.  No one is accusing Joe Biden of being a world leader.  And Kamala Harris appears to be taking batting practice.  If Ukraine loses, and gets absorbed by Russia, the United States will look like the proverbial paper tiger...especially after the Afghanistan fiasco and what appears to be a coming cave-in by Washington on the new Iran nuclear deal.  

Obama called it "leading from behind."  Honest people call it defeat. American "friends" around the globe will have the right to ask, "Who's next?"  

After the debacle in Vietnam in the early 1970s, a notion began to circulate in diplomatic circles that the worst thing you could be in the world is an ally of the United States. After fighting alongside the Vietnamese for a decade, the new leftist Democratic majority in Congress cut off all aid to those comrades, in what President Ford called at the time an act of dishonor.  But it satisfied the cravings of the new radicals that were transforming the party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy into the party of George McGovern. That crowd is back.

And so leadership has fallen to an out-of-power Republican Party. If it functions as it should, it will be the majority party come November.

March 19, 2022      Permalink