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Ruth King

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Blue Vs. Red: 2022 Test Scores Show Devastating Toll Of School Shutdowns By Luke Rosiak

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.dailywire.com/news/blue-vs-red-2022-test-scores-show-devastating-toll-of-school-shutdowns

Academic proficiency plummeted in 2022 to among the lowest on record following the coronavirus school shutdowns, and children in Democrat-run states where teachers union demands led to extended school shutdowns bore the brunt, data released Monday from a national test known as the “nation’s report card” showed.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is administered to fourth and eighth graders every few years, allowing for a comparison of reading and math proficiency by state between 2019 — just before the pandemic — and 2022. The decline in math scores was the sharpest ever since the test began in 1990, and the average math scores were the lowest since 2005. The average eighth grade reading score was the lowest since 1998.

“Today’s NAEP results are the proverbial final nail in the coffin,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who won election in 2021 in a blue-leaning state largely because of fury over Democrats’ education policies, said Monday. “If this doesn’t wake you up, then you’re clearly trying to cover up your own bad decisions. In the business world, if this was your report card, there would be an immediate change in management. You would be fired. And I think that’s what voters did.”

He said leaders kept “schools shut for an unnecessary amount of time, forcing students to learn through a screen and telling them that’s a meaningful education,” and that coronavirus decisions followed decades of similarly bad education decisions.

The map at the top of this article shows how badly the number of fourth-graders who scored at least “basic” in reading fell compared to before the pandemic in each state. Basic is the lowest of the three tiers — basic, proficient, and advanced — and those who do not have even basic reading skills by fourth grade are at risk of serious problems when it comes to employment and higher education later in life.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

House midterms: Past the point of no return by Byron York,

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/house-midterms-past-the-point-of-no-return

The midterm elections are now two weeks away. Some political commentators have an interest in portraying them as one big, suspenseful, down-to-the-wire contest. Maybe some of those commentators are partisan. Maybe some just think it’s good for business. But the fact is, at this point, the midterm results, as far as the House of Representatives is concerned, are pretty much set in stone. Republicans are going to win. Democrats are going to lose. The Senate is moving in that direction, too. It might already be there.

“What’s about to happen is very obvious,” said one Republican deeply involved in midterm races. “Voters think the economy sucks. Voters think Joe Biden sucks. Therefore, voters think Democrats suck. End of discussion.”

Most people wouldn’t put it quite so bluntly. Or maybe they would. In any event, here is a quick, step-by-step synopsis of how things came to this point over the last 18 months:

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1) One party, the Democratic Party, controls the House, the Senate, and the White House.

2) The party’s margins of control in both the House and the Senate are so thin that even a narrow midterm loss would result in loss of the majority.

3) The opposition party has always been in a strong position to win because unpopular presidents like Biden, with an approval rating of 42.6% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, always lose seats in the midterm elections.

4) Economic events, especially inflation, have unfolded in a way that favors the opposition party.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The State of the Races By Richard Baehr

By on October 26th, 2022

1. A lot of people are asking me for my predictions. I expect to make final forecasts right before election day. However, to save time and not have to respond to lots of individual emails, an update is provided below. After the election, I will discuss the results and the implications for 2024 at the Restoration Weekend conference of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, in Phoenix, November 10-13.  There are many substantive speakers at this event on a wide variety of topics.  Information is provided below. At the 2018 event I was on a panel discussing the 2018 results right after a talk by Victor Davis Hanson. So, in a sense, thinking of a rock concert, Hanson “opened” for me.  

https://restorationweekend.org

2. Certain things seem pretty clear, and other things are very unsettled.  Republicans seem to have momentum, both in House, and Senate races. If you don’t believe me, look at Nate Silver’s models and forecasts at fivethirtyeight.com. Nate Silver’s model predicts the chances of a GOP takeover of the House are 80%. Two weeks ago, the GOP chances for control were 68%.  Most forecasts (RCP, Larry Sabato, Cook Political Report, 538) project   final House numbers for the GOP in a range of 230 to 240. Redistricting, which was played to the hilt in many states by both parties to the extent they could, has limited the number of competitive races. Ohio and Illinois are probably the two states with the most partisan redistricting.  House races may produce some strange results this year. The Democrats could win and hold Alaska’s only House seat. A Republican could win a House seat in Rhode Island. 

For the Senate, Silver has GOP chances are 45%, and were 29% two weeks ago. In other words, the GOP looks likely to win the House, and the Senate control is very much a tossup. Silver’s model incorporates among other factors, polling results (higher weights to more recent polls, and those with greater historic accuracy), as well as state or district voting history. 

At the moment, many Senate races are in play. Democrat-held seats which could shift include Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Washington State and Colorado are uphill for Republicans, but very good candidates have made these races competitive.  GOP held seats in play include Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and maybe Utah and Iowa. One big difference between the parties is that vulnerable Democrats are all incumbents. Three of the four most vulnerable Republican held seats are open- Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina. In most cycles, incumbency is a big advantage, especially in fundraising. Challengers are sometimes not picked until the late summer and are underfunded for the general election. 

On the other hand, one factor working for Republicans in some of the closest Senate races are likely big wins for GOP governors- Ohio, Georgia and New Hampshire in particular, as well as Iowa, and a stronger than expected  GOP candidate for Governor in Arizona. In Pennsylvania, the Democratic governor candidate seems well ahead, and is helping John Fetterman try to reach the finish line.

Incumbency may be a mixed blessing this year. Voters seem by and large miserable and unhappy (look at right direction, wrong direction surveys). Inflation and interest rates are high. Home values and stock market values have sharply dropped. We have a national crime wave, focused on cities where Democrats are in complete control, and politicians seem unable or unwilling to address the problem. Personal insecurity is a big deal. New York State has a close governor’s race, largely as a result of crime numbers. Bail reform, stifling how police can behave, greatly reduced police staffing, prosecutors more concerned with keeping criminals out of jail, than protecting their victims, are all making voters very sour on this issue. Covid lockdowns were often unnecessary and caused great economic damage, and very poor educational results with kids schooled via zoom. The incredible number of illegals allowed in the country at our wide open southern border suggests national lawlessness, and almost a complete abdication of responsibility by the federal government. 

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

NAS President Peter Wood Addresses the Pending Racial Preferences Cases

By on October 26th, 2022

https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/nas-president-peter-wood-addresses-the-pending-racial-preferences-cases

The following are remarks that NAS president Peter Wood presented at a meeting of “Oasis,” an informal group of academics and intellectuals that periodically gathers at the faculty club at New York University.  Dr. Wood was invited to comment on the pending U.S. Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College.  The National Association of Scholars filed an amicus brief in the case on the side of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., which represents Asian students who argue that Harvard has unlawfully discriminated against them on the basis of race.  

Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College is scheduled for argument before the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of this month, on Monday the 31st, Halloween. It is a matter of pure coincidence that this month has also brought the release of Halloween Ends, the thirteenth movie in the world’s most commercially successful horror franchise. For those whose filmic education stopped with Ingmar Bergman or Jean-Luc Godard, Halloween tells the tale of the rambunctious Michael Meyers, who likes to murder babysitters on October 31, generally in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois. Babysitter Laurie Strode, played by the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, has a knack for escaping Mr. Meyers’ knife. One or the other or both of them die at the end of the movies, only to spring back to screen life in the next sequel.

I bring this up, of course, because the parallel is uncanny. Here is a story about a terrifying and seemingly unstoppable force that destroys the lives of young people with impunity. It is met with heroic resistance and is seemingly doomed to be defeated once and for all, only to rise again. It is no small matter that Mr. Meyers owes his longevity to state officials who, over and over again, fail to do their duty. He escapes from an insane asylum, the morgue, incineration, and numerous other seemingly terminal destinations. Racial preferences in college admissions owe their longevity to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, but of course not just her.

I am among those that hope and expect that racial preferences in higher education will end, if not on Halloween proper, at some point in our lifetimes. If next June the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions, of course, that decision will not mean an end to racial preferences anytime soon. But it will be a significant step in the right direction, and it will help those of us who seek to bring more and more pressure on colleges and universities to finish for once and all the Meyers-esque career of racial preferences.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, BOOKS Comments turned off

The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews David L. Bernstein

By on October 25th, 2022

https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2022/10/the-new-progressivism-makes-no-room-for-jews/?utm

In 2016, as “intersectionality” escaped from academia to become a progressive buzzword—and came to to signify a doctrine that all just causes are linked and complementary—David L. Bernstein began to suspect that it was apt to be used against the Jews. As he pointed out in an article published that year, activists argued under the banner of intersectionality that anyone opposed to racism in the U.S. should also oppose the existence of Israel. He thought, however, that there was hope:

While I didn’t say so explicitly, I’d come to believe that the mainstream Jewish community needed to find a way to include the Jewish narrative in the intersectional matrix—to complicate it—so that Jews and Israel were not viewed as the perennial oppressors and Palestinians the perennial victims. Concerned about the growing backlash to my article, I used the opportunity [to participate in a panel discussion with some of my critics] to soften my stance on the topic, stating “I still have much to learn,” and that “intersectionality is a complex, interesting, and nuanced phenomenon that we need to understand, not just from the perspective of the pro-Israel community, but from its own perspective as well.”

Bernstein, at the time still president of the left-leaning Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), soon learned that there was little room for such a compromise position:

[In 2020], the JCPA pulled together a Zoom meeting for a coalition called Jews for Criminal Justice Reform, which included top Jewish criminal-justice activists from around the country. After an inspiring talk by Paul Fishman—a former federal attorney from New Jersey—on the need to end mass incarceration, we broke up into smaller groups to discuss next steps. A lawyer named Jared, the group facilitator for my breakout session, asked, “What do you all think our criminal-justice reform priorities ought to be?” Ariella, a young professional staffer from a Jewish civil-rights organization, interjected, “Before we talk about strategy, there’s a lot of internal work we have to do in the Jewish community. We need to recognize our complicity in white supremacy and ensure we have black Jews at the forefront of these efforts.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Report: COVID-19 Led to Major Setback in Students’ Grades, Test Scores Across the Country By Eric Lendrum

By on October 25th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/24/report-covid-19-led-to-major-setback-in-students-grades-test-scores-across-the-country/

The latest national report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as “the nation’s report card,” reveals the full devastating extent of COVID-19 lockdowns on the nation’s education system, with students across the country seeing a significant drop in grades and test scores.

According to the Associated Press, math scores saw the largest decrease in recent history, with four out of ten eighth-graders failing to grasp basic math concepts. In addition, average reading scores dropped to their lowest levels since 1992. No state saw an improvement in academic performance.

This is NAEP’s first national report since 2019, with no report given in 2020 or 2021 due to the severe restrictions on education as a result of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Thus, as the first comprehensive national report on educational standards since the pandemic began, this year’s national report card paints a dire picture for the state of education as it struggles to recover, even a year after the pandemic more or less ended.

“It is a serious wakeup call for us all,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. “In NAEP, when we experience a 1- or 2-point decline, we’re talking about it as a significant impact on a student’s achievement. In math, we experienced an 8-point decline — historic for this assessment.”

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, describing the results of the study as “not acceptable,” used the findings as proof that the federal government needs to continue giving billions in aid to local schools to recover.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Halloween and Election Day: Days for the Undying Dead When bad ideas are like a horror flick killer, continuously resurrected to kill again. By Vincent McCaffrey

By on October 25th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/24/halloween-and-election-day-days-for-the-undying-dead/

Some very scary ideas never seem to die. There is a great Geico Insurance commercial playing off horror film tropes, in which several teenagers hide in a shed behind some chainsaws rather than go to a waiting automobile to escape a serial killer. But unlike this commercial, our political tropes are not so funny. The political ideology of socialism has killed and maimed hundreds of millions, haunting us for the last 100 years. Yet political leaders just continue to change the name—national socialism, communism, progressivism—and try again. 

The basic reason authoritarians get away with this is because some academic minds never seem to tire of the idea of trying to make everyone equal. It is not enough to have equal opportunity; they want equal results. The attempts to implement this insanity and the failures are well documented—empirically, historically, and existentially. Nevertheless, new dissertations clog the diploma mills every year as young minds, well-shaped by a politically progressive public school system, attempt to square the circle. 

During the recent funeral ceremonies for Queen Elizabeth II, several seemingly well-educated commentators seemed to offer their support for the idea of the British monarchy, with its stability and traditions, as a better alternative to our messy democracy. Never mind that America isn’t supposed to be a democracy but, rather, a representative republic. It’s still too messy. But Lo! Within just a few weeks that same hallowed British system has collapsed yet again. Who is messy now? 

Similarly, a number of financial commentators have extolled the efficiencies of the “Chinese system.” They really know how to get things done, don’t ya know. They don’t waste energy on political games. A crafty dictator like Xi is better suited to a complex world of shifting priorities. The yuan will soon replace the dollar as the standard for the world. China is already more powerful than the United States, both economically and militarily. etc. etc. Except for the fact that it’s not true, it makes for compelling copy if you are the sort who longs for such certainty. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

J6 Prosecutors Redouble Retaliation and Revenge The U.S. attorney for D.C. says he plans to double January 6 prosecutions in the coming months. Meanwhile, tone-deaf GOP politicians prepare to feed the hand that bites them. By Julie Kelly

By on October 25th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/24/republicans-in-congress-pile-on-j6-defendants/

The sentencing of Steve Bannon, a longtime confidant of Donald Trump and harsh critic of the Joe Biden regime, wasn’t the only action at the Elijah Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, D.C. on Friday. Around the same time U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols announced his decision to send Bannon to prison for four months following his contempt of Congress conviction, Nichols’ colleagues were handling several cases related to the Department of Justice’s massive investigation into the events of January 6, 2021.

In separate courtrooms last Friday, three men were sentenced to years in prison for their involvement in the Capitol protest, including Matthew Bledsoe of Mississippi, who will spend four years in jail after a D.C. jury found him guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding, a nonviolent felony. A man from Kentucky pleaded guilty to one count of civil disorder in another courtroom. And in courtroom 23A, five members of the Oath Keepers, a so-called “militia” group according to federal prosecutors, entered the fourth week of their seditious conspiracy jury trial.

Once again last week—similar to every other week—the Prettyman courthouse was overrun with January 6 cases; arraignments, detention hearings, status conferences, and plea agreements routinely swamp the daily calendar of nearly two-dozen federal judges in the nation’s capital. A press release issued by Matthew Graves, the Biden campaign advisor and current U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia responsible for the unprecedented criminal investigation and grand jury proceedings targeting Donald Trump, bragged that “more than 880 individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including over 270 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.”

But Graves’ office is just getting started. The Justice Department recently warned that the government plans to more than double that number over the next few months. “Prosecutors estimate that more than 2,000 people actually entered the Capitol unlawfully that day, which means hundreds more arrests are likely in the months to come,” Politico reported in July. (Graves on Monday also announced the appointment of two D.C.-based prosecutors to investigate voting fraud in the 2022 election and combat “discrimination and intimidation at the polls.”)

New arrests are announced each week in what can only be considered at this point a punative legal crusade against Americans who protested Biden’s election that day.

The prosecution has nothing to do with justice or public safety and everything to do with retaliation and revenge. Further, the overwhelming majority of charges are misdemeanor offenses that nonetheless result in terrifying FBI raids, bankruptcies, job losses, media harassment, and destroyed families for those targeted. The government is undefeated in more than a dozen jury trials for January 6 defendants; jurors living in perhaps the most hyperpartisan city in the country have convicted every Capitol protester on every count in record time as judges refuse to move trials out of Washington, D.C. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Glazov Gang: Inside the Globalists’ Haunting Depopulation Agenda The global elitists’ crude strategy to do the opposite of “Be fruitful and multiply.”

By on October 25th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/glazov-gang-inside-the-globalists-haunting-depopulation-agenda/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Patrick Wood, the Editor-in-Chief of Technocracy.news and the author of Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation.

Patrick takes us Inside the Globalists’ Haunting Depopulation Agenda, unveiling The global elitists’ crude strategy to do the opposite of “Be fruitful and multiply.”  

Don’t miss it!

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

JustStopOil protesters attack waxwork King Charles with chocolate cake Consider the planet saved

By on October 25th, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/juststopoil-waxwork-king-charles-chocolate-cake-madame-tussauds/?utm_source=

The JustStopOil activists are on the loose around Europe again. This time they’ve chosen to stop off at Madame Tussauds in London — the museum of life-sized wax replicas of famous celebrities and icons.

So, who did they set their sights on? Kylie Jenner? Taylor Swift? Or any of the other gas-guzzling, private plane flying celebs? Nope. This time twenty-year-old Eilidh McFadden and twenty-nine-year-old Tom Johnson covered a waxwork model of King Charles III with chocolate cake.

Perhaps in their simple minds, this gesture made sense. Two fingers up to the Establishment and all that. But the new king is known for his extensive environmental campaigning. He even — to the dismay of many — attended the UN’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow last year.

In a statement the protesters said: “We are here because we seek to protect our freedoms and rights, because we seek to protect this green and pleasant land which is the inheritance of us all.

“The science is clear. The demand is simple: just stop new oil and gas. It’s a piece of cake.”

Clever huh? Well, King Charles is so committed to going green that he converted his beautiful old Aston Martin DB6 to run on wine and cheese.

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