This Week's Dumb Things Said and Done by Various People

    

   There have been a bunch of dumb things said and done by various people in the public square this week. As usual, it's hard to decide where to start, and how many to include. Justin Trudeau and Hillary Clinton are the obvious leaders, even though I posted about her earlier this week, and Trudeau last week. Joe Biden is in the running every week, so he and his administration have to be mentioned. New York's Governor and leading officials deserve a place, and even NYC's Mayor Adams will be included. My final point will be about the general dumb reactions of the left-wing media, when they get exposed as wrong. Even when they know it, they double down, instead of owning up, for the most part.

   When it comes to Justin Trudeau, he's done something that even Pres. Biden hasn't accomplished: The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian version of the ACLU, has filed suit against his emergency declaration. Of course, Biden hasn't done anything comparable so far, but he urged Trudeau to take this course. Mr. Trudeau, for his part, has shown an incredible tone-deafness to the liberal principles he has embraced in similar past situations. He seems to think that labelling these protesters as "racist" and "violent," with actual proof to the contrary, he can justify cancelling their civil liberties. While his actions have some public support, it has also created an international response, beside the CCLA lawsuit. The specter of seizing people's bank accounts, and licenses for just donating to the protesters has alarmed free people across the globe. As James Bovard writes in the NY Post:

Trudeau claims that his crackdown on truckers is “about restoring confidence in our institutions.” But truckers have already gloriously succeeded in demonstrating the tyrannical nature of Trudeau’s regime. As Canadian columnist Andrew Lawton quipped Tuesday, “If you have to tell people you’re not trampling on their civil liberties, you’re trampling on their civil liberties.” 

    Hillary Clinton deserves an honorable mention for her performance at the NYS Democratic Convention this week. She responded to the latest Durham filing with the same "right wing conspiracy" line she always has, and somehow turned her introduction of NY Gov. Kathy Hochul into an opening gambit for her third run at the US presidency in 2024. She is incredible, and not to be underestimated. For her, dumb is a temporary description, used by people who don't understand her genius. All the same, if she is the Democratic nominee in 2024, she will lose, even if Trump is the GOP nominee.

   Pres. Biden. What more to say? Maybe he thinks that if he keeps saying that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is "imminent," Putin won't do it, just to make Biden look bad. All kidding aside, I have to revise my disagreement with Tucker Carlson about the Ukraine situation, thanks to Biden's latest statements. I agree with Tucker that Ukraine is not as high on the rankings of US national security as Pres. Biden is treating it as. I still don't think that supporting Ukraine against Russia risks starting WW III. I do agree that our southern border crisis is a much more important national security issue.

  That's why it's almost comical that Pres. Biden sent VP Harris to Ukraine, after she was so ineffective with her handling of the ongoing US southern border crisis. It looks as if he's setting Ukraine up for almost NO support, after all the bluster and vows of sanctions. One question I keep hearing from the right is "why hasn't he already imposed sanctions?" Pres. Biden is acting more like a Putin stooge than Pres. Trump ever did. That's another reason I wonder why Tucker calls Ukraine "Biden's puppet." If he's right, this is all kabuki theater, and Ukraine's fate is sealed. They will become a Russian vassal state.

   This is a complex international situation, and I have read many different analyses of it. I don't know which is correct, because I don't know enough of the facts. However, I do know that Joe Biden has been a fool, when it comes to foreign policy, for most of his career. As President, I don't think he is in charge, and the people telling him what to do are conflicted, and grasping at straws, or they would have put forward a firmer front against Putin months ago. He has nobody but himself to blame, for not confronting Putin sooner.

   I mentioned Hillary earlier, and her appearance at the NYS Dem Convention. It was an ideal setting to showcase her, because it is the apex of Democratic dysfunctional politics and policies. She praised newly elected NYC Mayor Eric Adams, as well as the unelected Gov. Hochul, who is seeking her first elected term, after taking over from the disgraced former Gov. Cuomo (who, like Hillary, is eyeing a political comeback, already). Hillary didn't mention Cuomo, or any of the issues that are challenging the Democrats' domination of NYS and NYC, preferring to focus on herself, and national Republicans. 

   However, there are many issues that NY Democrats should be worried about, that they are ignoring. Mayor Adams has gone to Albany, and met with Gov. Hochul, Assembly Speaker Heastie, and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, to push his anti-crime, quality of life agenda. Unfortunately, Gov. Hochul is equivocating, and the legislative leaders are not receptive. Higher crime rates are not just a NYC problem, so this is not only a statewide issue, but a national one. Mayor Adams has drawn national attention as the answer to Democrats' "soft on crime" and "defund the police" reputation, but he can't get Democrats in his own state to follow his lead.

   That's not the only issue that NY Dems are having a problem with. School policies are becoming a wedge issue in cities and counties across the nation, and NY is a state where the teachers' union has more influence on the elected political leaders than almost anywhere else. How can a state defend it's education policies, when the only way that graduation rates have stayed stable is by lowering standards? There is a full-on attack on achievement and academic excellence, cloaked in the name of "racial equity." Unfortunately, the students and parents on the short end of these policies are minorities, as well. Again, Mayor Adams is going against the grain of state Democrat policies, and trying to expand "gifted and talented" programs, instead of ending them.

   Another piece of the education policy debate is charter schools. They have been an absolute success in NYS, but are still being strangled by the Democrats in power. The facts are that they spend less per pupil of public money, and have better results than any regular public school. The key is that if they don't perform adequately, they can lose their charter, and be shut down. The only reason that Democrats are opposed to them is that they are mostly not unionized, and the teachers' union is among the biggest powers in the party. A great example recently are the comments of Assemblyman Phil Ramos, who compared them to the coronavirus, as well as modern day racist system, imposed on "our people." The political demagoguery is so disingenuous and beyond belief, I'll just quote the NY Post's editorial explanation for it:

His actual gripe, it turns out, is that a second charter school just got OK’d to open in his area, offering families a chance to escape from the 7,500-student Central Islip school district, where (per State Education Department data) just 39% of black and 40% of white third-graders test as proficient in English, and only 29% of Hispanics. The math scores are terrible, too.

     He rants about "our community," but white kids are doing little better than black kids in his district, and Hispanic kids 10% lower proficiency is most likely because of the high amount of recent immigrants that Pres. Biden has shipped to Long Island, that don't speak English. In other words, he doesn't care about the children that are failing in regular public schools. The teachers' union is his ticket to re-election, and continued employment. He doesn't represent the parents and taxpayers of his district, or he would welcome more and better educational choices in his district. I have a feeling the unions might not be up to the task of keeping him in office, if the national wave of parents voting on education issues reaches his district.

    Finally, there is the media. As Democrat politicians are doing an abrupt "about face" on mask mandates, defunding the police, and other issues, it is almost comical to watch their media allies try and report these backtracks with a straight face. "The science has changed" is my favorite one, but there are several others. The Washington Post has removed parts of some of their stories that relied on the discredited Steele dossier. Of course, there are many more issues that the media are still clinging to the Democrat party line on, in the face of reality. The NY Post ran an editorial calling on both the WaPo and NY Times to give back their Pulitzer Prizes that were awarded for faulty reporting. The cable news outlets that serve the Democrats are a mess, with CNN knee-deep in its own scandals, including the ongoing Cuomo/Zucker story, and MSNBC just being a non-factor. At least on the other side, FNC has some competition from Newsmax, and other upstarts that are keeping it on its toes. 

   It looks as if the Democrat outlets are happy to ignore stories that damage their party, which is pretty much what they've always done. They don't seem to realize that the reason their ratings and credibility are so low is because they never came clean about the years of pushing "misinformation," even after it became clear that it was just that. It became comical when they started pointing fingers at Republicans, FNC, and other right leaning media as spreading "misinformation" about covid, and the political and policy responses to it. Let them continue to live in their alternate reality, where Pres. Biden still has a chance to turn the direction of his presidency around, and Democrat policies will ultimately prove to be successful. After the midterm shellacking, I'm sure they will still see the bright side, saying something like "we thought it would be worse" to keep the fiction alive.

   This is just some of the dumbest stuff that happened this week. I share most of the columns linked in this post, as well as others, and further short opinions in my Facebook group Graffiti Politti on FB. Feel free to take a look, and join! I accept all members, and allow all speech, even stuff that I can't stand to read. The only rules are no non-political spam, and no overt attacks or bullying of another member. It's a place for free political and cultural expression, and Facebook keeps us from being widely read, so we have less than 200 members.