Bonkers, Blather, Blunders, & Buffoons #7
Well, the antics of those zany quasi-competents (being kind) in D.C. have once again quickly overflowed the banks of the Quad-B retaining pond, so here, already, is yet another edition of the hard-to-believables.
Speaking of beyond belief, or maybe not, given the other parade of executive branch nominees of every race, skin hue, creed, and national origin except, perhaps, actual sane qualifications, Mr. Biden & Company actually nominated a proud graduate of the University of Moscow (not Idaho), with apparent, at least past, communist leanings, to become Comptroller of Currency, in other words, the person in charge of the nation’s banking system. Responded Senator Rubio: “She supports communist policies, and a communist should not be our Comptroller of the Currency.” Echoed the great Senator John Kennedy during his committee questioning: “I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.” The nominee responded: “I’m not a communist. I could not choose where I was born.”
Terrific, the nominee for a top U.S. Treasury Department position is apparently a naturalized citizen born in Russia! Fortunately, this nomination was eventually withdrawn when it became clear that the Senate Committee interviewing her would not confirm her nomination (even Democrat members objected to confirmation). But it just shows how out of control from democratic reality it was to nominate this scary person to begin with. A complete waste of everyone’s time, and too close a close for anyone’s peace of mind. The nominee, by the way, was reported to be an advocate for eliminating private sector banking. In a national environment not yet free from administration lunacy, this nomination should never have been made.
Toward the end of November, on live national television, the president declared that “America is back.” Reality dictates that he left out two important words there. More correctly: America is on its back. With out of control inflation, a virus spreading with no end in sight, reliable energy costs & concerns, repressive political policies nationally and at the Democrat-run state level, with hordes of illegal, non-virus-tested, politically unvetted migrants continuing to storm and stream across our southern border, and with America’s children having the socially-destructive fiction of ‘white supremacy’ crammed into their heads, from elementary school thru college, no, Mr. president, America is nowhere near back to where it’s loyal, patriotic citizens of all races and economic levels demand nor deserve. How long can 11-more months be?
Oh, but wait. Perhaps we’re being too harsh. Certainly, so, in the closed liberal minds of ABC’s “The View” panelists, convinced that the administration is actually “working for America.” Ignoring the fact that, yet today, too few Americans are actually working, although getting better since the federal government finally, far too late, stopped paying people to simply stay at home. The panelists went on to laud the administration for accomplishing just about everything good, stopping short of giving the White House credit for the birth of Christianity. Will not bore you with the exaggerations and fibs, so close to this very special season of truth.
And then there’s Mrs. Clinton not wanting to miss another (and every) chance to grab some media spotlight. The reason, you see, for any feelings of disapproval among Americans about Mr. Biden’s feats is that “Americans don’t quite grasp the extraordinary accomplishments” of the president. Finally, truth. Yes, that’s correct, we don’t “grasp,” in the least, any accomplishments of his administration, let alone any “extraordinary” ones, to date. Oh, but wait, there was at least one truly extraordinary feat, but not in a positive sense. That would be the failed, nationally humiliating, disastrous political and humanitarian, bass-ackwards (i.e., soldiers before civilians) pull-out from Afghanistan. That inept, unbelievable, downright stupid departure, leaving Americans, America’s vetted friends, billions in military equipment, societal liberty (especially for Afghan women), and much of America’s remaining prestige behind, will leave lasting, nasty, scars on our great nation, and especially on the so-called “extraordinary” president for generations, as this nation’s regrettably captive media do all in their collective power to erase, and otherwise force us to forget, that horrible purely politically-driven debacle.
Moving now to our once universally respected academia, that is, before the leftist take-over of much or most of it. Reportedly, a number of higher-education schools, in the aftermath of the Kyle Rittenhouse self-defense-based acquittal, have actually created “safe spaces” (here we go again) and made counseling services available to students having difficulty coping. The decision, you see, was (of course) “racist,” even though all of the principals were white! Oh, just wait until the ever-tender younglings discover that employers don’t offer “safe spaces” for those having a bad day. Compare this phenomenon to 80-years ago when the only “safe space” for millions of college-age American males, with lives on the line, was a fox hole!! Oh, what a difference from the far-too-many who seem to be far-too-easily-and-desiredly pampered today. And that may well include, as a for-instance, a used-to-be-a-male opting to swim on the girl’s team! Thank heavens this is nowhere near the normal make-up of today’s male population, and may that particular genetic ‘pool’ be extremely limited, as our nation faces very dangerous international challenges, that may, one day, once again involve the defending of America and our freedom. Regardless, we must hope and pray that such does not ever happen.
Sticking with academia for another enlightening few moments, the student newspaper at Boston University recently published an interesting editorial, interesting, that is, if your preferred zip code is 00000 (Mars). The savvy writer claims that “their campus has a ‘safety issue,’ and one way to fix it could be defunding or outright abolishing the campus police and replacing them with new community services.” All of this because “it is clear the BUPD is not designed, nor does it seem willing, to protect all students on campus (department alleged to have a “racist history”). Young naïve man or woman writer, what a spendidly bad idea. Yep, all you have to do is publicize the fact that Boston University no longer has any police protection on campus and the incidences of crime there will plummet as rapidly as a canoe tumbling over a waterfall. But if it doesn’t, and it won’t, you can fall back on “community services” and “safe spaces” for solutions. Save us from ultra-liberal campuses and the numerous angry wokie students they dump upon the nation each year, who may be unprepared or unwilling to deal with the realities and expectations of adult society in the world of work.
And, mercifully, just one more, for now, from the academic side of the otherwise normal life, this one from some of the public schools in, you guessed it, California. Seems larger systems there have decided that it’s a really good idea to drop, yes, drop the D and F grades from end-of-semester reports. Presumably, this helps level the achievement playing field for some categories of students. What it actually represents is the socially-pressured victory of ‘equity’ over ‘equality.’
Equality, you’ll recall, provides opportunity for all to achieve. Equity, however, seeks to provide, not equal opportunity, but rather equal outcomes. But since students, as with all adult Americans, are different in their abilities, the only way to achieve equity is to reduce or outright eliminate long-in-place and traditional standards of achievement, whether within an academic or business environment. Thus, D and F student abilities are then artificially made to match those of A, B, & C students at the point of achievement assessment. One common-sense reaction to this move by the article writer on this subject was: “I wonder whether students will become even less engaged if they know they can avoid getting a terrible grade without doing much work.” While a teacher at a private school in Oakland, CA clearly supports the traditional five-letter-grade system. Said she: “D’s and F’s play an important role in the classroom. They signal that a student did not learn the material and needs extra help. Not reporting D’s and F’s is the equivalent of lying about a student’s progress.” Dropping out those lower two letter grades is what former president George W. Bush called “the bigotry of low expectations.”
Decreasing, or even eliminating, achievement or proficiency standards in the name of equity misleads those having to make future judgments about a person’s true abilities. When it comes to a surgeon, let’s say, about to do delicate, invasive, hopefully corrective work on your brain, would your preference be for that doctor to have been a product of equity or equality? Regardless of Progressive pressure for the former, American society needs far more continued emphasis on equal opportunity to achieve by traditional measurement standards, rather than encouraging those with lesser abilities to be “socially-promoted” in school, solely for the purpose of achieving, not excellence, but, artificially-manipulated equal results.
And in the interest of nonsense perpetuation, we actually have a district attorney in one of our eastern major cities claiming that “we don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, nor a crisis of violence” while retail store looting plagues some metropolitan areas (LA & SF, for example), and several of our major cities are experiencing record numbers of homicides. It’s all media distortion, you see. But I won’t put you through any more ultra-liberal delusion for now, so that’ll be it for this edition of Quad-B, as more and more reportable buffoonery continues to overflow daily in our America.
(Anti-comptroller quotes via dailycaller.com, Harry Wilmerding, 11-19-21; “America is Back” fiction via foxnews.com, Jessica Chasmar, 11-25-21; The View response via dailywire.com, Virginia Kruta, 11-24-21; Mrs. Clinton’s quote via dailymail.com, Nikki Schwab, 11-24-21; College offer safe spaces via the federalist.com, Spencer Lindquist, 11-24-21; Boston University defund the cops quotes via foxnews.com, Adam Sabes, 12-10-21; Dropping D & F grades in school quotes via powerlineblog.com, Paul Mirengoff, 12-6-21; “We don’t have a crisis” quote via dailycaller.com, Ailan Evans, 12-10-21).