SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

FIGHTING THE LIE – FROM FOX:   Tucker Carlson called President Joe Biden's claims that the greatest threat to the U.S. was white supremacy a "disgusting lie" Wednesday on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," and Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper agreed the rhetoric was "sad."  Carlson pointed out that, according to available data from law enforcement, the statistics do not support what Biden claimed – noting that while there were about 60 killings reported as white supremacist between 2015 and 2019, nearly 800 civilians were murdered in Chicago in 2020 alone.  Biden also claimed that White Americans who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan were not embarrassed by their "hate" and that "that hate became embedded systematically and systemically in our laws and our culture."  "We do ourselves no favors by pretending none of this ever happened or it doesn't impact us today. Because it does still impact us today," Biden said.  Cooper said Biden's comments were part of "perhaps one of worst race hoaxes since the Jussie Smollett charge."  We have racism in America, but  America is emphatically NOT a racist country.  A racist country doesn't elect Barack Obama as president, Kamala Harris as vice president, not does it fight a civil war over slavery.  The political left, which now runs much of the Democratic Party, despises America and is trying to force a false narrative on us.  The result, if they are successful, will be a country in which black and white are separated, and a country too weak and divided to defend itself.

MORE DUMBING DOWN – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   The Board of Regents at the University of California system voted on May 21 to make all of their schools “test blind” for the 2023-24 school year, and to not use the SAT or ACT standardized tests after that.  The UC website reported this suspension will “allow the University to create a new test that better aligns with the content the University expects students to have mastered for college readiness. However, if a new test does not meet specified criteria in time for fall 2025 admission, UC will eliminate the standardized testing requirement for California students.”  The UC system had been one of many college systems in the country that went temporarily “test optional” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether or not standardized tests come back at those other schools is currently up for grabs.  Long seen as a metric for academic success and aptitude, standardized testing has come under increased scrutiny in recent years by some educators and activists. The worldwide pandemic at least temporarily tipped things in their favor.  The anti-ACT/SAT group FairTest sent out a news release in early May announcing, “The number of accredited, bachelor-degree granting colleges and universities that will not require current high school juniors applying for fall 2022 admission to submit test scores has topped 1,400 schools. That’s more than 60% of the 2,330 undergraduate institutions in the United States.”   As Johnny Carson used to say, "Aren't we lucky."  You'd think that colleges would want to keep standardized tests as another tool to judge achievement.  But achievement ain't what many colleges are about these days.

June 2,  2021