How Liars Wreck a Country

By Bruce Deitrick Price   May 10, 2023

Last year, Forbes concluded that "only 16% of adults in the U.S. say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in newspapers, and just 11% said the same for television news."  Anyone confronting these stats must conclude that our media are deeply incompetent or crooked or both. The New York Times announced a few years ago that defeating Trump was the important thing.  They gave themselves a free pass to lie all they want.  How can they now reclaim their honor or their usefulness? Real journalists, when they hear an assertion, immediately try to determine whether the assertion is true or false.  This is also what scientists do.  It's honest, valuable work.  Unfortunately, our liberal journalists do not care about true or false.  When they hear an assertion, they try to determine whether it will help their agenda...their narrative. ........To Read More....

CNBC Parts Ways with Anchor Hadley Gamble After She Accused Former NBCUniversal CEO of Sexual Harassment -  CNBC announced on Tuesday that it had parted ways with anchor and senior correspondent Hadley Gamble after she had accused former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell of sexual harassment.  Describing Gamble as a “distinguished journalist” with “deep experience in the Middle East and beyond,” CNBC wished her a prosperous future............

Newsweek Columnist Blames Republicans for ‘Democrat-Run City’ Failure - A Newsweek columnist thinks Republicans are part of the problem in these failed Democrat-run cities where Republicans hold no political power. This is like blaming the Captain of the Love Boat for the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. But blaming the GOP for these urban disasters is a good way to keep the voters in these urban disasters voting for the same Democrats who created these urban disasters.  Newsweek’s thinking goes like this:.........Odd how Newsweek doesn’t suggest Democrats might want to change their policies, which are proven failures.  There is nothing any Republican can do to help these godless cities. Moreover, these cities are not our problem. We don’t live there. Moreover, no one wants our advice. Whenever we offer advice, we are called racists........

Two Black Males Arrested for Murder May Face Hate Crime Charges After Admitting They Sought to Kill a White Person, Louisiana Police Say -  Two black males who were arrested for allegedly murdering a handyman may face hate crime charges after one admitted that they were seeking to kill a white person, according to police. 23-year-old Tahj Matthews and 25-year-old Maurice Holmes were arrested on April 11 and charged with the first-degree murder of 66-year-old Lawrence Herr the day before in the city of Kenner, Louisiana. Herr was working as a handyman when he was fatally shot in the back...........

The Victims of the ‘Racist’ Latino Mall Shooter Included Latino Children. The victims were very "diverse", May 9, 2023 by Daniel Greenfield 9 Comments -  Contrary to what liberals think, it’s not impossible for Latinos or any minority to be racist or a Neo-Nazi. The Nazis had a wide base of support in the Muslim world, Africa and Latin America. That included Jose Vasconcelos, the ‘Mexican’ politician and thinker who created the term La Raza Cosmica, which gave us the La Raza movement and its accompanying nationalism, and who propagandized for Nazi Germany. (The Nazis were not racist in the KKK sense, they hated what they considered mixed and inferior races, but they did not consider black people or Asians to be on that list, they did place Jews, gypsies and to some degree Slavic peoples there. But they also were not consistent except, like the Left, in saying whatever was convenient. Thus the Japanese became an Aryan people.).............

 

How Much Do Democrats Really Care About Jordan Neely?  Derek Hunter

May 10, 2023 It’s quite a racket – and it works. A lot of people die every single day, thousands in fact, and most people don’t give a single damn about them. Not because we’re heartless monsters, but because we didn’t know them. Of the very few that make the nightly news, we can feel a fleeting sense of “Man, that’s horrible” when we hear the details of a tragedy, but we do not lose sleep over it. It’s natural and healthy to take news like that in stride, or else you’d live a life paralyzed by misery because, like I said, thousands of people die every single day.........

Daniel Greenfield Unleashed

By Rich Kozlovich 

Once again Daniel Greenfield covers all the bases dealing with the incompetence of Democrats, the Biden administration, the Biden Crime Family, corruption of the media, academic stupidity and insanity, the folly of affirmative action, failure of all these leftists to grasp fundamental understanding of basic values and the consequences of that failure.  

Leftism is the real plague the world is facing, not covid, and it's far deadlier than any plague that impacted humanity, and killed, impoverished, and brutalized more people than any system that ever existed throughout all of history.  

We're now facing The Inevitability Factor!  That's when the awfulness of these delusional policy decisions reaches its apex and finally forces everyone to come face to face with reality.  We need to accept there really is good and evil in the world.  There really is such a thing as right and wrong.  There really is such a thing as "normal", a reality the left wishes to destroy that way there can be no such thing as abnormal.  

We really do need to get that!

San Fran Board of Supervisors Endorses Race Reparations to Cost Each Non-Black Family $600,000 - Supervisors said they were surprised to hear pushback from politically liberal San Franciscans. The slave state of San Francisco is moving forward on a plan to pay reparations for generations of slavery under the Bay Area Confederacy. And all it will take is $600,000 from every non-black family in the area. The cost, “presented on a per-household basis, will be nearly $600,000 per non–African American San Francisco household.”  And that’s a conservative estimate........

50% of Americans Says the Media Deliberately Misleads - Only 25% believe that the mainstream media are not out to lie to them.  In the last 5 years, the media claimed that we were in a crisis of “misinformation” and appointed themselves as the nation’s fact checkers, censoring social media and determining what people could and couldn’t say.  Awkwardly, very few Americans trust the media and 50% believe the media is lying to them........

Media Confirms Memphis Police Killing Caused by Affirmative Action - Memphis academy instructors said the racial dynamics ruled out disciplinary measures. Democrats and their media claimed that 5 black officers getting into a violent confrontation with a black suspect that ended in his death was somehow about systemic racism. Police sources said it was about affirmative action promoting people who were unfit to be cops. After refusing to even address the question, the Washington Post has an in-depth report that essentially confirms what police sources were saying...........

Wellesley Shows the Trans Agenda is About Getting Rid of Women - “I’ve been booed at public gatherings where I’ve referred to Wellesley as a women’s college". Wellesley College used to be a women’s college. Then it announced that it would let in any man pretending to be a woman. All Wellesley asked was that he at least do the bare minimum to pretend he’s a woman. The current policy is that “Wellesley invites applications from all those who live as women and consistently identify as women”. Paradoxically that means that men who falsely claim to be something called “trans women” are welcome, but women who actually are women, but suffer from the delusion that they are “trans men” are barred from the college. But that’s not enough. The trans agenda is about eliminating women...........

This is What Happens When Politicians Can’t Tell Reality from Fantasy - Newark became a "sister city" with an Indian nation that doesn't actually exist. Cargo cult politics briefly collided with reality in Newark, New Jersey. A bilateral agreement was signed with the United States on January 11 to recognize Kailash. United Kailash and Newark City, New Jersey, United States of America signed a “Bilateral Code of Ethics Agreement” at the Newark City Hall. Permanent Ambassador of Kailash to UN Vijayapriya Nithyananda, Mayor Baraka, Deputy Mayor Defreitas and others participated in this function. Also, representatives of Kailash from New Jersey were also present. Agreements were signed on mutual assistance in dealing with the impacts of disaster, climate change, etc., and on issues of public interest such as mental health issues, violence, poverty, illiteracy, etc. Awkwardly, Kaliash turned out not to exist..............Should Baraka or whatever politically connected idiots he hired have realized that Kailasa doesn’t exist? I doubt they cared. Their grasp of the world is mostly limited and Kailasa had all the right credentials, like climate change, mental health issues. In a cargo cult culture, the right virtue signaling is more important than actually engaging with reality. If men can be women and deficit spending is investing, the boundaries of reality become very porous and imaginary countries can easily fall through them..............

 The Pedophile Behind Prison Abolition - Foucault, who sexually abused 8-year-olds, advocated for pedophiles. When Angela Davis, a domestic terrorist, wrote, “Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition”, she began by extensively citing an ex-Marxist French philosopher. “Michel Foucault’s ‘Discipline and Punish’ is arguably the most influential text in contemporary studies of the prison system,” she argued while crediting herself with an analysis of the “racial implications” of his ideas. There is a straight line that runs from Foucault and Davis to the “prison abolition” movement that in its mildest form encompasses police defunding and reducing penalties for offenses and diverting criminals away from prison, and to proposals like Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s BREATHE Act that would create a “roadmap for prison abolition,” with the “full decarceration of federal detention facilities within 10 years”.......

Biden Denies Lifesaving Road to Alaskan Indians - “I sat there in labor not knowing if I was going to die or my kid was going to die."You may recall this story from a decade ago. It was one of the many disgraces of the disgraceful Obama administration. In one of Alaska’s most remote outposts, where a thousand hardy souls make their homes, the Obama administration has put the fate of birds and bears above the lives of people, blocking construction of an 11-mile gravel trail connecting a tiny fishing hamlet to a life-saving airport. King Cove has a clinic, but no hospital or doctor. Residents must fly 600 miles to Anchorage, via Cold Bay’s World War II airstrip, for most medical procedures including serious trauma cases and childbirth. Frequent gale-force winds and thick fog often delay or jeopardize medevac flights........ 

Cultural Collapse is Killing More Americans Than Anything Else - The death rate of youngsters ages 1 to 19 rose 20% in the three-year span - Suicide rates, overdoses, shooting sprees, gang violence: they’re all different ways of saying that a lot of people see no purpose in going on living. It’s hitting the youngest generation the hardest. Deaths of American children and teens spiked between 2019 and 2021, the result of increased car wrecks, shootings and drug overdoses, according to a Virginia Commonwealth University survey of federal data published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association....... 

Workplace Political Discrimination is a Civil Rights Crisis- 1 in 4 say they know someone who has suffered at work over their politics. Federal, state and municipal governments relentlessly pursue workplace discrimination, but none of them address the most pervasive form of workplace discrimination in America. Political discrimination or viewpoint discrimination is everywhere. And yet at a time when workplaces impose unconscious bias tests to target racial prejudice and other forms of discrimination, few corporations look for viewpoint discrimination. Some even mandate it in their HR procedures which systematically discriminate against conservatives. Meanwhile the problem appears to have worsened over the last 4 years..........

Gen. Milley Won’t Stop Russia From Retrieving U.S. Drone Wreckage - The profiles in courage just keep coming. The profiles in courage just keep coming.Three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said the highest levels of the Kremlin approved the aggressive actions of Russian military fighter jets against a U.S. military drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday.The Russian jets dropped jet fuel on the MQ-9 Reaper, an unprecedented action, and two of the officials said the intelligence suggests the intent seemed to be to throw the drone off course or disable its surveillance capabilities.It was “Russian leadership’s intention to be aggressive in the intercept,” said one of the officials.Russia then followed that up by announcing it was going to retrieve the wreckage to count coup and gain whatever intel they liked..........

SVB Hired Major Biden Donor to Help its “Liquidity Crisis” - And he talked to Biden's deputy treasury secretary. It helps to know the right people. And Silicon Valley Bank had hired someone close to the ‘Big Guy’. A dramatic government intervention seemed unlikely on Thursday evening, when Peter Orszag, former President Barack Obama’s first budget director and now chief executive of financial advisory at the bank Lazard, hosted a previously scheduled dinner at the bank’s offices in New York City’s Rockefeller Center. Among those in attendance were Mr. Adeyemo (Biden’s deputy treasury secretary)… Blair Effron, a large Democratic donor whose firm, Centerview Partners, had just been hired by Silicon Valley Bank to advise it on its liquidity crunch, was also there. Mr. Effron and Mr. Adeyemo spoke as it became evident that Silicon Valley Bank was running out of options and that a sale — or some bigger intervention — might be necessary. The New York Times story, “How Washington Decided to Rescue Silicon Valley Bank’s Depositors” is a bit vague about who Blair Effron is............  

7 Senate GOPers Helped Make Disgraced LA Mayor an Ambassador - Republicans could have killed a major Biden nomination.This vote was one of those cases where Republicans could have killed a major Biden nomination. Nominating former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as ambassador to India was an insult to an important ally and a clear payback to special interests. The claims that he know about sexual harassment allegations had split the Democrats. After years of trying, the nomination passed by a narrow 52-42 margin. Thanks to Senator Lindsey Graham and a few GOPers............  

Biden Family Got Over $1M in Chinese Wire Payments- The total money transferred adds up to $1,065,692. The House Oversight Committee is digging into the Biden family business. Its latest revelations raise some interesting questions. The Oversight Committee stated that, “Bank records we’ve obtained reveal Rob Walker, a Biden family associate, used his company to transfer money from a Chinese energy company to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden, and an unknown Biden.” “Specifically, on March 1, 2017 – less than two months after VP Joe Biden left public office – Robinson Walker, LLC received a $3 million wire from State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company...........

SVB Went Woke, Then Broke, Then Got a Bailout- Americans can’t afford food, but leftist and Chinese companies get bailed out. Silicon Valley Bank spent billions on green energy, millions on Black Lives Matter and other leftist causes, until it finally ran out of ‘other people’s money’. That’s when the Biden administration decided to bail out its depositors. At a dinner hosted by Peter Orszag, Obama’s former budget director, Wally Adeyemo, Obama’s Nigerian assistant treasury secretary and Biden’s deputy treasury secretary, chatted with Blair Effron, an influential Biden donor, serving on Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board, who had been hired as an advisor by SVB to deal with its financial crisis. The outcome was inevitable. “Because of the actions that our regulators have already taken, every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them,” Biden lied. The deposits of ordinary Americans were already protected up to $250,000................

Socialist Politicians Make the Worst Bosses- "Foaming, spitting, uncontrollable rage”. It never fails. Leftists claim to campaign for workers, yet treat them like garbage. Despite the millions of dollars he commands, he historically paid his professional staff less than minimum wage. Nader, who told Business Week during the last campaign that he offers staff “unlimited sick leave,” ordered staffer George Riley to take a two-week leave of absence to work on a political campaign, refusing him to pay for the time. When I worked for Ralph Nader in 1980-81, he paid us $8,000 a year, hardly enough to get by on even then. We could scarcely afford the time to spend money, though, because Nader expected staff to work around the clock. Staff turned over rapidly. Few people could stand the hours, pay and abuse for more than a year or two. Or Bernie Sanders............ 

Facebook Hired Minorities and Paid Them Not to Work- "We were just sitting there". In the last 5 years, Big Tech firms came under heavy pressure to publicize the racial and gender demographics of their workforce and to improve their numbers. That’s hard when your workforce is mostly white, Asian and Indian. This story may shed some light on how Facebook went about improving its numbers. Meta (Facebook), like other tech companies, went on a hiring bonanza during the pandemic, as it faced enormous demand for its products and services while people were stuck inside. Meta said it had 44,942 employees on December 31, 2019. By the end of 2021, the company listed 71,970 employees in its annual report and wrote it “expect[ed] headcount growth to continue for the foreseeable future.” Meta then said that 2023 was going to be a “year of efficiency” after laying off 11,000 people in November. The company announced more layoffs this week that will affect another 10,000 people.........

Daniel Greenfield Unleashed

Who’s Running America? - Two of the three branches of government are in the hands of the mentally incapable.  Last week the Senate Democrat majority was hospitalized with Senator John Fetterman dispatched to a psych ward and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who doesn’t seem to know where she is, hospitalized for shingles. Fetterman and Feinstein didn’t let being hospitalized slow them down and went right on co-sponsoring bills even though the former had to be hospitalized because he couldn’t take care of himself and the latter no longer recognized colleagues.Even in the Senate, Fetterman couldn’t understand what was being said and Feinstein wasn’t aware that she had announced her retirement. Despite that there are press releases from their offices and they’re cosponsoring legislation as if they’re functional and able to make decisions........ 

It’s Not Censorship When They Do It -  Both sides agree that children should not be exposed to inappropriate materials. The New York Times has run dozens of shrill and false stories accusing Florida of banning books. The paper has numerous stories about what it calls “book bans”: virtually all of them involve removing sexual content from schools at the behest of parental groups and conservatives. And then it runs this. Should Classic Children’s Books Be Updated for Today’s Young Readers? New York Times The Times largely links to an op-ed, ‘The Truth About the ‘Censorship’ of Roald Dahl’ arguing that it’s no big deal. “Making changes, even rather sweeping ones, to classic works of literature is not as controversial as some would like to imagine.”......

Iraqi Prime Minister to Solve Nation’s Problems With Solar Panels -I have yet to see a problem that can't be fixed by putting up solar panels.  Hope and change. I have yet to see a problem that can’t be fixed by putting up solar panels. I believe we can all agree that what Iraq, a miserable war-torn hellhole in a permanent state of civil war (yes, long before we got there) whose only real resource comes out of the ground, needs is a climate policy. Iraq’s prime minister Sunday promised sweeping measures to tackle climate change — which has affected millions across the country — including plans to meet a third of the country’s electricity demands using renewable energy. If Iraq can’t change the weather by putting up solar panels and windmills, who can?............  

Blue-Eyed Hollywood Millionaire of Spanish Descent Claims to be Racism Victim - “There’s a lot of subtle racism".  You may remember Guillermo del Toro from The Shape of Water, one of the worst movies to ever win an Oscar, or the almost equally bad Blade II, or the recent Netflix campaign for Pinnochio that makes him seem like the next Walt Disney. But you may not realize that Del Toro, born to a Spanish automobile pioneer in Mexico was a victim of… racism. After offering his support to animators, del Toro opined about the racism that he has faced at various points in his career as a Mexican filmmaker. I didn’t realize Mexican filmmakers were a race.........  

Wokeness and Cryptocurrency Were Systemic Risks for SVB and Signature - Wokeness and crypto have a few things in common. They’re both imaginary currencies that claim to exchange bad for good when they actually trade good for bad. Their value lies entirely in a state of mind. If you believe that we are heading toward an imaginary utopia, political or technocratic, they seem very exciting. Theories are no substitute for facts. Utopians run on theories that can only be implemented either through mass delusion or mass repression. And when utopian ideas infect institutions, they pose a systemic risk. It’s no coincidence that SVB and Signature were suffering from both wokeness and crypto. Why settle for one scam when you can have two?............

Hollow Sanctimony Over Hawara - What the reaction to a rare Jewish riot in Israel says about Jewish liberals.  One Sunday, two brothers, Hillel and Yagel Yaniv, young men with a bright future ahead of them were murdered while stuck in traffic in the Muslim village of Hawara in Israel. The locals celebrated their crime by singing, handing out candy and shooting off fireworks in the air. “Every day, yes! – every single day – at least 20 Jewish cars get stoned while driving through Hawara,” Shmuel Sackett, the head of a tree-planting foundation, wrote...........

 

Fools, meet the evil you elected

August 17, 2021  By Terry Paulding

We tried before the election, to get you to see Biden for what he is. Evil, arrogant, self-centered, and bereft of any qualities of statesmanship or even good judgment. You didn’t listen. You believed the media stories; that the laptop was fake; that he was in his bunker, rather than campaigning, because of the evil virus; and that he wanted to heal the country and knew how to do it.

Guess you’ve graphically gotten your comeuppance now. Argue all you want that Trump wanted out of Afghanistan. That is true, but would he have left like this? Nope! He would have left from a position of strength that he could amply back up with action at the first hint of trouble. He would have gotten our equipment, our manpower, and our allies and interpreters to safety if there was a need to. He would have had a plan and the plan would have worked. He would not have sacrificed so much for so infinitesimal a reward.

Now we have chaos, an unimaginable number of people about to be slain, women and children throughout the country enslaved, and violent hate against our country germinating into future acts of terror. We have enacted an endgame that clearly leaves the sacrifice of so many of our soldiers, the maiming of so many more, to have been done in vain.

While Biden hides and Gen. Milley obsesses over CRT in the military, a country that we worked to help for 20 years, spending $90 billion dollars or more on, goes up in a puff of desert dust, its President fleeing with a helicopter load of cash. As the Taliban swarm the cities, people are trying so desperately to leave that they are climbing the outside of airplanes, only to fall to their deaths...........To Read More.....

Hubris: The undoing of great plans

August 17, 2021 By Howard J. Warner

After listening to President Joe Biden give his 20-minute speech explaining his decision to leave Afghanistan in the hurried way that has resulted in the fall of the nation (if we can call the tribal land such) I was compelled to end my half-year self-imposed exile from writing articles.  I had become fearful of the cancel culture and the woke antipathy that has overtaken our country.  But, watching the videos of the failure in Kabul has reminded me of the film during the fall of Saigon 50-years ago.  Have we learned anything from history?  George Santayana would be brought to mind as we relive this disgrace.

While all the experts point fingers and blame others it is time to understand the essential truth that caused the failure.  Undoubtedly the president was told that the Afghan military would be unable to maintain their ground without the support of the U.S. military.  Perhaps they did overestimate the ability of the Afghanis but this is not the problem. ............To Read More....

Biden should fire his entire national security team

August 17, 2021 By Silvio Canto, Jr.

We heard in 2020 how Joe Biden would walk into the presidency as a man well versed on foreign policy. The media repeated this over and over again, as we remember:

Biden has been blasted by even liberal media outlets for the scenes of chaos unfolding in the war-torn nation, as the Taliban seized power in Kabul and the Afghan government quickly collapsed amid the U.S. troop departure. The president has been accused of being caught flat-footed, looking incompetent, betraying allies, and emboldening American adversaries.

Yet part of Biden’s appeal to the press in 2020 was his supposed foreign policy chops after decades in the U.S. Senate and eight years as vice president, although Obama Secretary of Defense Robert Gates once remarked Biden had “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

The New York Times wrote in its endorsement editorial that Biden would “stock his administration with competent, qualified, principled individuals” and said he had the “necessary chops” to restore the country’s global reputation.

To say the least, the wise ones left their chops at home...........To Read More....

Afghanistan: Biden’s denial of responsibility

August 17, 2021 By Abraham H. Miller

There will be blood! That’s the one thing that can be said with any certainty about the catastrophe in Afghanistan. The ensuing question, of course, is who is responsible for the inevitable bloodletting?

The Taliban obviously. Their record for savagery long precedes the current debacle. But the cast of characters is much larger. There are a series of corrupt Afghan governments that despite the deluge of American treasure and blood failed to create a meaningful military force. There were the neo-cons whose delusion of regime change and nation building appealed to American hubris but had no correspondence to political realities.

There was the American failure to acknowledge history. Afghanistan has always been the graveyard of empires. Ask the British and the Russians or Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great.

But most of all there is the Biden administration that conducted an asymmetric negotiation in Doha for withdrawal without getting anything meaningful in return. The agreed upon intra-Afghan negotiations will not take place...........To Read More.....

 

Biden Couldn’t Have Screwed Up The Afghanistan Exit More If he’d Tried

Fmr CIA Analyst Zeller: Biden Lied, No Plan to Stop Allies Being Slaughtered by ‘Nazi’ Taliban

Pam Key 16 Aug 2021

Former CIA analyst Matt Zeller told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Monday on her show “Deadline” that President Joe Biden lied to the American people during his address on the chaotic evacuation of Afghans that worked with our military over the last 20 years.

On Biden’s speech, Zeller said, “I was appalled. There was such a profound bald-faced lie in that speech, the idea we planned for every contingency? I have been personally trying to tell this administration since it took office. I have been trying to tell our government for years this was coming. We sent them plan after plan on how to evacuate these people. Nobody listened to us. They didn’t plan for the evacuation of our Afghan war-time allies. They’re trying to conduct it now at the 11th hour.”

He continued, “I have Afghans on the ground right now who are telling me the Taliban going door to door in Kabul and making lists of people who used to work with us. They’re telling them with smiles on their face, evil smiles. They will be back for them once we leave. So we either take them now, or these people are going to die. I have been trying to tell anyone who will listen that this is a never-again moment in the making. This is an administration that seems to be a profound champion and defender of human rights. Well, sometimes, human rights have to be defended at the barrel end of a gun. The Taliban are a modern version of the Nazis.”........

 Women between the ages of 15 and 45 have already been ordered to make themselves available to slavish marriages with the male martyrs of their new global vision and rule by their distinct, and yes anti-Muslim, interpretation of Islam. Public stonings of women will return. Publicly spectacular executions will return. Systemic sexual child abuse will exponentially increase........To Read More...

Obama: The Affirmative Action President

August 18, 2011  By Matt Patterson @ American Thinker

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages.  How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer"; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.  He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as legislator. 

And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor.  It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? 

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass -- held to a lower standard -- because of the color of his skin.  Podhoretz continues:

And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon -- affirmative action.  Not in the legal sense, of course.  But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.

True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be?  As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate.  All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.  What could this breed if not the sort of empty  narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character.  Those people -- conservatives included -- ought now to be deeply embarrassed.  The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all.  Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth -- it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character?  Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles.  Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess.  It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence.  But really, what were we to expect?  The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.  When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense.  It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office. 

But hey, at least we got to feel good about ourselves for a little while.  And really, isn't that all that matters these days?

See also: The Era of Confronting Obama at Public Events

Update:

Author's Note.  A lot of readers have written in asking me how I came to the conclusion that Obama was an unremarkable student and that he benefited from affirmative action.  Three reasons:

1)  As reported by The New York Sun: "A spokesman for the university, Brian Connolly, confirmed that Mr. Obama spent two years at Columbia College and graduated in 1983 with a major in political science. He did not receive honors..."  In spite of not receiving honors as an undergrad;Obama as nevertheless dmitted o arvard Law. Why?

2) Obama imself as written e was a poor tudent s a young man. As the Baltimore Sun eported, in:

"'Obama's book 'Dreams from My Father,'....the president ecalled a time in his life...when he started to drift away from the path of success. I had learned not to care,' Obama wrote. '... Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it.' ut his mother confronted him about his behavior. Don't you think you're being a little casual about your future?" she asked him, according to the book. '... One of your friends was just arrested for drug possession. Your grades are slipping. You haven't even started on your college applications.'"

3) Most damning to me is the president's unwillingness to make his transcripts public. If Obama had really been a tellar tudent with impeccable grades as an undergrad, is there any doubt they would have been made public by now and rumpeted n he ront page of the New York Times as proof of is rilliance?  To me it all adds up to affirmative action.  

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Good news from Baltimore

June 14, 2021 By Silvio Canto, Jr.

A month ago, I went to Maryland to see my ailing mother.  I learned from friends that Baltimore has a terrible police shortage.  They need 1100 but only have 500 officers.   It's happening because the political class is failing to let the police do their job. Well. something has to give, because local businesses are threatening to hold back money.  This is the story:   

More than three dozen businesses in Baltimore’s Fells Point are threatening to withhold tax and permit payments amid "chaos and lawlessness" that they say has been "going on for far too long," according to local reports.

The coalition of 37 businesses sent a letter Tuesday to officials, including the mayor, council president, police commissioner and state’s attorney, complaining about illegal alcohol and drug sales, public drinking, poor trash pickup and parking enforcement, and other problems, according to several local reports.  

They are calling for Baltimore officials to restore "basic and essential municipal services." "[W]e are fed up and frustrated, and we now realize that nothing will change unless we demand action," the letter states, according to local affiliate FOX Baltimore. ..............

They plan to hold their taxes back until the city does its job. Maybe this is the start of a national movement that will finally bring city Democrats to their senses............To Read More....

 My Take -  "Bring city Democrats to their senses".  He's kidding right?  You can't fix stupid, and the stupid have no sense, and Baltimore's politicians are not only stupid they're surrounded by people  who are even more stupid than they.  How do I know that?  They keep electing them.  How stupid is that?  Baltimore is doomed, as are a lot of major cities in the world. Black Lives Matter, Antifa, Muslim jihadists and eco-freaks are now in charge, and the sane and intelligent are leaving.  And they're never coming back!  Companies and individuals have found they don't need to be located in a major metropolitan area to work or do business.    New York City, San Fransisco, Los Angeles, and all the other Democrat run crap holes are going down the tubes, and eventually they'll all look like Detroit.  Run down, torn down, violent and unsafe for anyone, including the criminals. 

Biden’s already wrecked much of the Middle East progress Trump made

May 10, 2021 By Thomas Lifson 

 

Surveying the damage already inflicted on the Middle East Peace achievements of the Trump Administration in just over 100 days of the Biden presidency, Caroline Glick calls that region, “A Powder Keg, Courtesy of Washington The piece is lucid, so I recommend reading the whole thing. But the damage is heartbreaking to those of us that saw signs that a genuine new equilibrium was forming, with the prospect of the Arab world accepting the existence of Israel. Here is some of the damage:.......To Read More.....

Violent Crime Surged in These Cities After Mass Black Lives Matter, Anti-Police Protests

May 9, 2021 Ohio Star Staff by Thomas Catenacci

Violent crime surged in several U.S. cities that saw massive Black Live Matter and anti-police protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death last summer.  The upswing of violent crime, including homicides, coincided with the protests, increased anti-police sentiment among Americans and declining morale in police departments, which have since struggled to recruit new officers. The number of murders alone increased by 36.7% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to public information compiled by data analytics reporter Jeff Asher.

“We are definitely at a critical manpower shortage here,” Louisville police union spokesperson Dave Mutchler told the Daily Caller News Foundation last week. “The climate that we all find ourselves in right now is a lot more demanding and stressful on officers.”

“Morale is basically in the toilet,” he continued....................To Read More........

Kamala’s first foray into international diplomacy does not go well

May 9, 2021 By Andrea Widburg 

The most relentless slander the Democrats leveled against President Trump was that he was a racist. Any person with marginal intelligence looking at the record knew this was a lie but the Democrats, thanks to their media lackeys, made it stick. Their promise was that international relationships with the non-racist Biden-Harris administration would be so much better. When Biden gave Kamala “Ms. Diversity” Harris responsibility for dealing with the southern border, they celebrated. Six weeks into that brief, though, Harris’s first act was to offend and incense the Mexican president. Ruh-roh!

One of the most baffling things for the Democrats was the fact that, even as they railed against Trump for being abnormal and offensive, foreign leaders got along with him very well. Chief among those was Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (aka AMLO)............Having falsely claimed that Trump was a bizarre anomaly, Democrats assured Americans that normalcy would return with a Biden Harris administration. And it has, if one considers “normal” to be raging inflation only four months into the new administration, and a completely open southern border, over which hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are flooding, many of them sick with the same COVID that Democrats are weaponizing at home to destroy American’s civil rights. Otherwise, we’re witnessing a strikingly abnormal, sick, anti-American administration but, for now, we’re stuck with it..............

Finally, six weeks after taking on the responsibility for dealing with illegal aliens swarming the southern border, Kamala announced that she would meet with the presidents of Mexico and Guatemala. One could practically hear Democrats exult. Finally, after the agony of Trump’s bizarre (and yet baffling successful) foreign policy efforts, the Democrats would show how it’s really done. Mixed race Kamala would bring her intersectional chops to the Latinx politicians and all would be well.

Except nothing went well. Kamala, whom I’ve always been told by people who know her, is as dumb as a box of rocks with the personality of an arch narcissist, managed to leave President Lopez Obrador in a towering rage, furious at American machinations and deeply offended when she simply walked out on him.............. As Kamala’s peculiar personality, tactlessness, and fairly significant stupidity become increasingly apparent, the fact that she is poised to take over the presidency is unnerving, to say the least.......To Read More....