Displaying posts categorized under

POLITICS

Joe Biden’s Scholarship Choice He’d kill a program that helps 86% of graduates, mostly black and Hispanic, go to college.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-scholarship-choice-11595630807?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Amid all of the money Washington wastes, here’s some good news: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced this week that her department will award at least $85 million over five years for the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program.

The scholarships let lower-income parents of children trapped in failing public schools attend the charter or private schools of their choice. According to the Education Department, nearly 98% of students with Opportunity Scholarships graduate from high school, compared with 69% of D.C. public school students. Some 86% go onto college, while more than 90% of scholarship recipients are black or Hispanic, and the average family income is less than $27,000 a year.

This is money well spent on upward mobility and opportunity, yet Democrats have been trying to kill the scholarships since they began in 2004. In 2009 Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin succeeded in passing a prohibition on any new scholarships unless the program was fully reauthorized, though Republicans reversed that in April 2011 during budget negotiations with Barack Obama. In subsequent years President Obama consistently sought to reduce or zero out funding.

Enter Joe Biden, whose own children benefitted from private schools. But in his recent unity platform with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Mr. Biden specifically calls for eliminating the D.C. scholarships. It takes a special political animus to kill scholarships for poor minorities while proposing literally trillions of dollars in new spending on countless other programs.

Biden Vows to Stamp Out ‘Islamicphobia’ That means more Islamic proselytizing is coming to American public schools. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/biden-vows-stamp-out-islamicphobia-robert-spencer/

The presidential campaign of 2020 has so far unfolded in more of a crisis atmosphere than any campaign in decades. Portland, Oregon and other cities are still engulfed by Antifa violence (as the Democrats side with the violent rioters), coronavirus hysteria is still hamstringing the nation’s economic life and prosperity, social media giants are waging all-out war against the freedom of speech, and America’s history and heritage is under direct and unapologetic assault from Marxists vowing a revolution in America. In the midst of all this, on July 20, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden demonstrated anew the disturbing priorities of his increasingly anti-American party.

Instead of addressing the sharp rise in crime and lawlessness, the demonization of American history and culture, the Left’s assault on the Second Amendment and other basic rights, or any of the other burning issues of the day, Biden chose to address the “Million Muslim Votes Summit,” hosted by Emgage Action, which claims to be is the largest Muslim PAC in the United States. In the course of his rambling remarks, Biden declared: “One of the things I think is important, I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.”[1]

In the midst of what could very well turn out to be a second American civil war, or even the end of the United States as a free republic, Joe Biden is preoccupied with getting our schools to proselytize for Islam more intensively than they already do. For make no mistake: that is what Biden means when he says he wishes that our schools taught more about Islam. Schools already teach about Islam as a major world religion. That teaching has already been widely criticized as whitewashing the crimes committed in the name of Islam and in accord with its teachings, and Biden wants even more of that: he thinks the cure for what he repeatedly called “Islamicphobia” (there’s that famous “stutter” again, but you can’t really fault him for getting a word wrong that’s artificial and made-up in the first place) is for American schoolchildren to be relentlessly indoctrinated with the idea that Islam is wonderful, and never mind about all those dead bodies of people killed to screams of “Allahu akbar.”

A Put-Up Job: The FBI, CIA, Mueller, and Schiff Investigate Trump-Russia Collusion: Charles Lipson

https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/put-job

With so many big stories breaking, it’s hard to get attention even for important news about the FBI’s and CIA’s misdeeds. Still, the wrongdoing at James Comey’s FBI and John Brennan’s CIA was serious, as the news this week amply demonstrates.

On July 17,  we learned that the FBI knew, just as Trump’s presidency was beginning, that there was no evidence his campaign had colluded with Russia. That’s the significance of a memo written by FBI agent Peter Strzok in mid-February 2017 and just released.

The news matters for three reasons. First, almost all the public investigation and damaging narrative about “Trump-Russia collusion” came after investigators knew how little supporting evidence there was.

Second, the more we learn about the ensuing investigations, the more they look like concerted abuses of government authority. We give law-enforcement and intelligence agencies tremendous power so they can protect us; when they abuse that power, they need to be held accountable and reined in. That seldom happens to anyone in Washington’s sprawling bureaucracies. The Swamp protects its own within its gurgling ecosystem of power, profit, regulation, and rent-seeking. Just ask Lois Lerner.

Third, when the FBI, Department of Justice, and intelligence agencies act in biased, partisan, and illicit ways, they cut to the very heart of our constitutional democracy, damage our institutions, and undermine trust in them. That is exactly what happened in 2016 and afterward. Public trust was undermined by these prolonged investigations and the narrative about them. It will be undermined further as we learn how the investigators themselves likely pursued partisan goals, ignored crucial evidence, and broke laws to do it. (The counter-charge, already being made, is that exposing these violations is itself partisan.)

Biden Says Trump Is America’s First ‘Racist’ President By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-says-trump-is-americas-first-racist-president/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=

SITTING ON HIS BRAIN TAKES A TOLL ON JOE….RSK

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called President Trump the country’s first racist president during a virtual town hall Wednesday.

“The way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they’re from, is absolutely sickening,” Biden said at the virtual event organized by the Service Employees International Union when a healthcare worker brought up Trump’s habit of blaming Asians for the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has regularly referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus,” the “Wuhan virus” and the “Kung Flu.”

“No sitting president has ever done this,” Biden said. “Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has.”

Last year, when asked by the Washington Post if it was wrong to describe Trump as “a racist with a white supremacist policy agenda,” Biden said no, but did not want to go so far as to label Trump a racist, saying instead that the president was promoting “racist policies.”

Nancy Pelosi Calls the Wuhan Coronavirus ‘the Trump Virus’ By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/07/22/nancy-pelosi-calls-the-wuhan-coronavirus-the-trump-virus-n670314

ILHAN OMAR’S NEW NANNY…RSK

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during a Tuesday interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer that the United States is suffering from the “Trump virus.”

“I think with the president’s comments today, he recognized the mistakes he has made by now embracing mask-wearing and the recognition this is not a hoax, it is a pandemic that has gotten worse before it will get better because of his inaction. And, in fact, clearly, it is the Trump virus,” Pelosi said.

“What do you mean when you say the Trump virus?” Blitzer asked.

“The Trump virus: If he had said months ago, let’s wear masks and let’s not – let’s socially distance instead of rallies and whatever they were, then more people would have followed his lead,” Pelosi replied. “He’s the president of the United States.”

There are a number of falsehoods in Pelosi’s claims.

For starters, Trump never called the coronavirus a hoax. In fact, while Pelosi was distracted by impeachment, the Trump administration was busy addressing the coronavirus outbreak, taking various measures to limit the spread of the virus in the United States, that were quickly politicized by the Democrats once impeachment was over. Trump’s travel ban with China, for example, was described as an overreaction, and Democrats accused him of trying to scare the public. “This is no time for Donald Trump’s record of hysteria and xenophobia — and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science,” said Joe Biden, who (like many others) has since flip-flopped on the travel ban.

Pelosi’s Stand for Ilhan How Jew-hate became the new normal in the Democrat Party. Ari Lieberman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/nancy-pelosi-endorses-anti-israel-agitator-ilhan-ari-lieberman/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has endorsed Ilhan Omar over her more moderate opponent in a hotly contested primary race for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district scheduled for August 11. Despite Pelosi’s endorsement, Omar’s challenger, Antone Melton-Meaux, has managed to garner a substantial war chest and has out-funded Omar by wide margins. He draws support from more moderate Democrats who view Omar with suspicion and have been turned off by her toxic rhetoric, questionable ethics and anti-Semitic commentary.

Omar has raised the ire of moderate Democrats who view her malign commentary as a liability to the Democratic Party. She has also raised eyebrows by engaging in a pattern of ethical breaches that would have ended the careers of other politicians similarly situated.

Omar has been dogged by accusations of marrying her brother in an alleged convoluted immigration, education and marriage fraud scheme. It’s an allegation that she’s referred to as “disgusting lies” but she’s yet to rebut the charge, the evidence for which remains compelling and persuasive. The FBI is reportedly investigating the claim but has yet to confirm or deny the existence of an official criminal investigation.

She also filed joint tax returns with an individual she was living with while simultaneously legally married to another individual, to wit, her alleged brother. In addition, Minnesota campaign finance officials found that Omar had misused campaign funds in violation of state rules. She was forced to repay her campaign committee nearly $3,500 and was also required to pay a $500 penalty to the state.

Trump Has Already Won the 2020 Election Roger Simon

www.theepochtimes.com/trump-has-already-won-the-2020-election_3430395.html

Given the polls, you would think anyone positing Donald Trump has already won the 2020 election was some kind of blithering idiot—and maybe I am. (I’ve been called worse.)

But I can’t help but think that in current conditions the polls are not only not worth the paper they’re printed on, digital or otherwise, they’re about as accurate as a thermometer run over by a six-wheeler.

No one sensible is talking about their political allegiance these days in public—especially to an anonymous pollster.

Instead, they’re buying guns, in record numbers.

Why wouldn’t they? Calling 911 has become about as useful as calling tech support for a transistor radio run over by the same six-wheeler.

The destroyed statues are the least of it. They’re inanimate. The actual people of Seattle, Portland, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and on and on are living a nightmare. Violence stalks the streets of all our major cities whose murder rates are going up stratospherically. (As I type this, the news is reporting 9 more shot in D.C.)

Have there ever been remotely as many stores and businesses smashed, many still not operating, from the Atlantic to the Pacific?

America isn’t in the midst of a civil war. It’s in the midst of a national meltdown with the banana-brained neo-Marxists of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, stoned like sophomores (if that) on Foucault or some other self-important “critical theorist,” leading the way to oblivion and mutual hatred (actually a return to tribalism).

Democrats, The Party Of Science (Fiction)

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/20/democrats-the-party-of-science-fiction/

We don’t know for sure but we’d bet most of those we see smugly wearing NASA T-shirts are Democrats, because, after all, they’ve declared theirs to be The Party of Science. But that’s about as true as one famous Democrat’s claim that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

From President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, to the political right’s warranted skepticism of the man-is-overheating-Earth narrative, the Democratic machine, which includes the legacy media and an ever-expanding segment of academia, has peddled the indictment that Republicans and conservatives are anti-science.

According to failed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, the Trump administration denied the science and denied the experts when it tossed out a public health crisis “playbook for any administration that followed” that had been left by the Obama White House. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has labeled the GOP as the “anti-science” party. Just a few months back, noted Democrat Barack Obama said Republicans have “denied the science of climate change just as they denied the science of pandemics.”

Before the pandemic, Democrats called anyone who didn’t kneel before the shrine of Al Gore and activist researchers trafficking in climate fear to be a “science denier,” just as they will again once the coronavirus no longer dominates the headlines.

“The Republican War on Science,” written by journalist Chris Mooney, summarizes as well as any other rant the Democrats’ contention that the political right is anti-science. The Publishers Weekly reviewer, no doubt eager to join the charge, said the tome “is the first to put the whole story, thoroughly documented, in one place.”

This is all rather funny, because the “science” the Democrats put their faith in is often little more than a set of baseless theories that fit their policy agenda. They treat their own share of “settled science” as if it’s witchcraft.

For instance, the left is convinced that genetically modified foods are mysterious products that pose a profound health threat. The fanaticism and fear-mongering of GMO crops are much like the 20th century – and the 21st century in Democrat-run Portland – resistance to fluoridated water that has left a trail of harm. 

The Voter-Suppression Myth By Erick Erickson

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/07/27/the-voter-suppression-myth/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=

Democrats manufacture the alleged problem, and then the media amplify it

Both parties engage in mythmaking to justify defeats or amplify wins. Since 2016, media dominated by the Left and sympathetic to the Democrats have pushed myths as justification for failure. Russia stole the 2016 election. It could not be that Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate beaten by a man not very well liked outside a core group of supporters. It had to be theft.

Grievance increasingly fuels the American political landscape. Republicans fundraise off toppled statues. Democrats fundraise off Donald Trump possibly beating their candidate. After 2018, grievance combined with progressive white guilt has given rise to more mythology. Now, it is not just the president collaborating with Vladimir Putin to steal elections. It is also Republicans suppressing the votes of minorities. The Democrats are not only manufacturing the mythology but using a playbook to create problems they can then blame on Republicans as proof of their claims.

In 2018, the national media fawned over Beto O’Rourke in Texas. His supposedly Kennedyesque looks and propensity for F-bombs gave him an absolute pass on being both a white man who drove a Hispanic Democrat from office in a primary and one who attempted to flee the scene of a wreck he caused while drunk. The media wanted nothing to do with those stories because he was trying to take out a Hispanic officeholder named “Ted Cruz.”

David Catron: Why the Polls Predict Trump Will Win Voter expectation data buried deep in some surveys suggest another upset.

https://spectator.org/why-the-polls-predict-trump-will-win/

Lately, pollsters and pundits have been nervously pondering the following question: “If Trump is behind in the polls, why do most voters say, in the same surveys, that he will win the upcoming election?” As Harry Enten recently noted at CNN, “An average of recent polls finds that a majority of voters (about 55%) believe that Trump will defeat Biden in the election. Trump’s edge on this question has remained fairly consistent over time.” This is far more than mere statistical curiosity by number nerds. Several peer-reviewed studies have shown that surveys of voter expectations are far more predictive of election outcomes than polls of voter intentions.

Voter expectations concerning who would win a given election were consistently more predictive than surveys using only conventional polling questions. 

The polls that appear to portend a one-term presidency for Trump actually predict that the president will trounce Biden badly this November.

According to studies conducted by researchers in the United States and in Europe, any pollster attempting to divine the outcome of an election should pay far less attention to what survey respondents say about the candidate they plan to vote for than the candidate they actually believe is going to win. Professor Andreas Graefe of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LSU Munich), proclaims these citizen forecasts, as they are sometimes categorized, “the most accurate method that we have to predict election outcomes.” Dr. Graefe elaborates on this assertion at considerable length in Public Opinion Quarterly under the title “Accuracy of Vote Expectation Surveys in Forecasting”: