90 Miles From Tyranny

Saturday, February 27, 2021

The "It Wasn't Me" Klown Show....

Embarrassing excuse offered for Biden’s vanishing State of the Union Address

All of a sudden, here it is the end of February, and there is no State of the Union (SOTU) address scheduled for President Biden. That's odd because last month, Biden promised what sounds exactly like a SOTU:

"Next month, in my first appearance before a joint session of Congress, I will lay out my 'Build Back Better' recovery plan," he said. "It will make historic investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, innovation, and research and development in clean energy."

The AP and PBS both got wind that the address was to be given on February 23 in and said so in posts that are now deep-sixed:

But on February 16, Jen Psaki denied such a plan in a press conference:

[W]hen asked about the timing, his press secretary Jen Psaki said there had never been a plan for him to address a joint session this month.

"We don't know where the Feb. 23 date came from. It's a great mystery," she said during the regular daily briefing.

"I've not Nancy Drewed that one out today, but it was never planned to be in February, and we don't have a date for a joint session at this point," Psaki said, comparing herself to the popular character in a series of children's books who solves mysteries.

It is only tradition that a president address a joint session of Congress early in the year to fulfill the constitutional requirement (Article II, Section 3) that a POTUS "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient[.]"

Jimmy Carter, a failed one-term president, actually skipped his in the year of his inauguration, missing an opportunity to lay out his plan for the presidency and the nation, with blanket television coverage, plus plenty of pomp and circumstance. And look what happened to him.

Yet Biden's handlers seem to have pulled the plug on the man the late Rush Limbaugh mocked as "Plugs" because of his hair transplants to forestall a receding hairline. The lickspittle media are rushing in with "fact checks" to assure the nation that there is no requirement or deadline for a SOTU speech. But it is awkward, especially considering the rising doubts about Biden's mental and physical state. Nick Arama of RedState expressed the view of many:

Let's face it. There's a big problem with having Joe try to deliver a ninety-minute speech at 9:00 p.m. at night without a teleprompter in front of Congress. He has trouble just making it through basic remarks before media for a few minutes, much less a speech of that length. They must be wracking their brains to figure out how they're going to pull it off.

As we previously reported, Biden hasn't even had a solo press conference with the media yet. By this time, both Barack Obama and Donald Trump had done solo pressers.

The excuse dredged up yesterday for missing SOTU is...you guessed it...the January 6 Capitol incursion, which the left wants to make the defining moment of the century:

The Capitol Police is keeping its security posture high in response to intelligence that indicates some extremists who joined the Jan. 6 insurrection have discussed plans to attack the building during the State of the Union, Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman revealed Thursday.

The chatter among extremists about trying to blow up the Capitol during the still-unscheduled presidential address, Pittman said, has prompted the Capitol Police to maintain the elevated presence it has kept since last month's riot. Any decrease in the police's posture, she said, would come after the threat passes and other gaps identified in the aftermath of the Capitol siege are resolved.

While she didn't precisely blame the de-scheduling of the SOTU on "chatter among extremists," that is the logical conclusion, and it is an embarrassing one, especially considering the thousands of National Guard troops still occupying the nation's capital.

Democrats know that Biden is not all there. That's why a bunch of them want to take away the power for him to launch a nuclear strike. Just yesterday, he had to be reminded by Kamala, at a COVID event, not to go wandering up to people without wearing a...

When I finally get myself together

I'm gonna get down in that sunny southern weather

And I find a place inside to laugh

Separate the wheat from the chaff

I feel like I owe it to someone

Buffalo school students reportedly being taught ‘all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism’

Students in the Buffalo, New York school district are being subjected to highly controversial materials blaming white people for “perpetuating systemic racism” among other materials, according to a whistleblower.

The training and student materials were highlighted anew earlier this week after Chris Rufo, a researcher with the Discovery Institute who has been tracking the spread of so-called “critical race theory” curriculum in public schools, in government, and in the private sector, reported the whistleblower’s remarks, according to Fox News.

Rufo said that the whistleblower told him Dr. Fatima Morell, the district’s associate superintendent for Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Initiatives, is engaged in the promotion of “radical politics.”

That has taken the form of “scoldings, guilt-trips, and demands to demean oneself simply to make another feel ‘empowered,’” the whistleblower, who was described by Rufo as a veteran teacher, said.

The curriculum includes materials instructing students to believe the claim that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism.”

Previously, reports noted that the Buffalo school district had adopted “Black Lives Matter” materials that encouraged students to distrust traditional nuclear families.

In September, Rufo told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that the materials involving critical race theory were becoming pervasive within the federal government. “What I have discovered is that critical race theory has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people,” he said then.

Additional curriculum obtained by Carlson from the Buffalo Public Schools’ Office of Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Initiatives directs teachers to talk about “guiding principles” with students that include “Black Villages” aimed at “the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the ‘collective village’ that takes care of each other.”

The district reportedly removed the curriculum from online last year.

The veteran teacher from Buffalo relayed to Rufo similar findings that he has seen around the country as school districts have increasingly adopted the alleged “anti-racist” curriculum.

Earlier in February, Fox News also reported that the Oregon Department of Education had begun to promote a program instructing teachers to dismantle “racism in mathematics.” That concept maintains there is a perpetuation of white supremacy through the focus on discovering the correct answer to math problems.

In September, Rufo told Carlson that backers of critical race theory have “abandoned the core American principles of equality under the law, of judging individuals as individuals on their merits, and they are now adopting this radical left ideology of judging people from their...

Tom Cotton: Radical Liberals ‘Want to Erase Our History,’ ‘Replace It With Their Crazy Marxist Theories’

During his talk at CPAC Friday, Senator Tom Cotton got to the bottom of what really drives the left today, their total and complete hatred of America and what it stands for.

“More than ever, we need that kind of simple un-ambivalent, un-ashamed patriotism. The proud love of a great country because America truly is a great country, it is worth fighting for, it is worth dying for and it is worth defending our history,” Cotton said, to a cheering crowd.

“These — these radical liberals, they want to erase our history. They want to replace it with their crazy Marxist theories.”

Later in the talk Cotton rammed his point home “When they are tearing down statues of Lincoln and Grant, it is not about the Civil War or racism, it is because they hate America.”

Here’s the transcript, it’s well worth reading:

“Now I’ve got news for the Democrats. Again, turns out this open borders agenda is not very popular. You can see that in the polls about Joe Biden’s plans, 2020 was one of the best elections we have ever had, with Hispanic voters in particular and with immigrant voters in general.

It reminds me of a story a friend of mine back home told me, he works with the first generation immigrant named Manuel (ph). Manuel told him, my wife and both my boys and I all voted for Donald Trump. And my friend said oh, you didn’t vote for Donald Trump.

And Manuel said no, we voted for Trump. And my friend said why did you vote for Trump?

And Manuel pointed at the parking lot and he said have you seen my new pickup truck? And he said, did you know that both of my boys have full-time jobs now? And he said — (Applause) — he said, you know, I’m not offended I like what Donald Trump does. And like so many Americans across the country he said, we have Donald Trump to thank for...

Is There Anything More Destructive Than The Current Pace Of Leftist Indoctrination?

Report: Americans Made Big Wage Gains Under Trump

Average wages rose sharply in 2019 in then-President Donald Trump’s go-go economy and also rose again in 2020 as China’s coronavirus pushed many lower-income people out of jobs, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

The spikes reveal the Trump gains at the 2019 end of the EPI chart, released February 24 in the group’s annual “The State of Working America 2020 wages report.”

Source: Economic Policy Institute

“Men at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution saw their wages rise in 2019: a 2.6% increase at the 50th percentile and a striking 5.7% increase at the 10th percentile, along with a 4.2% increase at the 20th percentile,” according to the organization’s 2019 yearly report, The State of Working America 2019.”

Wages rose rapidly during the 2020 coronavirus crash, in large part because many lower-wage workers lost their jobs and were pushed out of the annual wage calculations. The new report says:

Wages grew [in coronarivus year 2020] largely because more than 80% of the 9.6 million net jobs lost in 2020 were jobs held by wage earners in the bottom 25% of the wage distribution. The exit of 7.9 million low-wage workers from the workforce, coupled with the addition of 1.5 million jobs in the top half of the wage distribution, skewed average wages upward. [Emphasis added]

Pro-migration progressives control the EPI, so the reports typically ignore the wage-cutting impact of labor inflation caused by the arrival of millions of legal and illegal blue-collar and white-collar migrants.

But the group also provides much useful information about slow wage growth since 1990 when President George H.W. Bush and Sen. Ted Kennedy collaborated to double legal immigration and dramatically expand white-collar visa workers.

The inflated supply of workers, consumers, and renters helped employers pocket the huge gains from routine productivity increases. That economic transfer spiked the stock market for investors and also pushed many states toward Democrat dominance.

Source: Economic Policy Institute

The EPI’s data echoes other reports.

“Families near the bottom of the income and wealth distributions generally continued to experience substantial gains in median and mean net worth between 2016 and 2019,” says a September 2020 report by the Federal Reserve banking system. The report, titled “Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2016 to 2019: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances,” said:

During the three years between the beginning of the 2016 and 2019 surveys, real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent, and the civilian unemployment rate fell from 5.0 percent to 3.8 percent.
…
Families at the top of the income and wealth distributions experienced very little, if any, growth in median and mean net worth between 2016 and 2019 after experiencing large gains between 2013 and 2016 [during the Obama administration].

The report notes that...

Romney And Schumer Advisers Among Dozens Of Congressional Staffers Participating In Chinese Communist Party Exchange Program.

The U.S.-China Transpacific foundation – a Chinese Communist Party-funded group – has sponsored several trips to China for U.S. Congressional staff including Mitt Romney’s top National Security Policy Advisor and Chuck Schumer’s Senior Advisor, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.

Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings reveal a 2015 letter wherein China’s Ambassador to the U.S. requests approval from the Obama administration for the U.S.-China Transpacific Foundation (UCTPF) to sponsor trips to China for congressional staff.

The letter to then-Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel noted the Chinese Communist Party would “fund all activities of this program”:

“The Government of the People’s Republic of China, as represented by the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the U.S., is the sponsor of this program. It will fund all activities of this program and no private funds will be used. However, no funding will be provided for expenses incurred by or for any member of the family or household of the federal employees participating in the program. The National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs will be the host organizations in China.”

Stengel ultimately approved the request, noting he was “pleased” to do so.

UCTPF FARA FILING.

Shortly after, a host of American lobbying firms began to ink lucrative contracts with the foundation to implement the proposed trips. As a Capitol Counsel filing notes, it was retained to “assist with Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act (MECEA) approved travel to China.”

“The program is intended to provide the Members of Congress and/or the congressional staff the opportunity to enhance their understanding on the cultural, economic, political and social developments of the People’s Republic of China, thus helping strengthen U.S.-China relations,” FARA filings added.

In contrast, the Trump administration terminated MECEA programs including the UCTPF exchange, dubbing them “propaganda tools.”
Guilty.

At least seven exchange programs occurred in the short period between October 2017 and October 2019.

In April 2019 “at the invitation of US-China Transpacific Foundation, Megan Reiss, National Security Policy Advisor of the United States Senator Mitt Romney, led a delegation of twelve congressional staff on a visit to China,” per the UCTPF.

And in April 2018, “Ryan McConaghy, Assistant Democratic Secretary of the United States Senate, previously Staff Director at the Democratic Policy and Communications Center run by Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, led a delegation of eleven congressional staff on a visit to China.”

The former Schumer aide’s trip included a visit to the “hometown of the first leader of People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong” where UCTPF professes the “delegation gained an in-depth understanding of his revolutionary efforts.”

“Later, they headed for Orange Island Park as beautifully described in the poem penned by Mao himself,” an event summary adds.

In October 2019, “William Kelsey Van Horne, legislative counsel of Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, led a delegation of twelve congressional staff on a visit to China from October 6th to October 14th, 2019.”

“On the afternoon of October 10th, the delegation went for a long-anticipated visit to Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd, where they had an in-depth discussion on the future development of 5G technology, intellectual property protection, network security, and the development of private enterprises in China. This Huawei trip gave delegates a deeper understanding of Huawei’s development strategy and...