90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #555

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #553

Orwellian: Biden Weirdly Declares America Recession-Free Just Days After His Administration Redefined the Term

With a poll showing only three in 10 Americans approve of his work on the economy, President Joe Biden said Monday that a recession will not be casting its pall over America.

“We’re not going to be in a recession, in my view,” Biden said, according to CNN. “The employment rate is still one of the lowest we’ve had in history. It’s in the 3.6 (percent) area. We still find ourselves, the people, investing.”

“My hope is we go from this rapid growth to a steady growth. And so, we’ll see some coming down. But I don’t think we’re going to — God willing — I don’t think we’re going to see a recession,” he said.

The White House paved the way for Biden to be correct by changing the definition of a recession. Traditionally, a recession has been loosely defined as two successive quarters of economic shrinkage, as measured by the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.

But with one quarter of shrinkage documents and a Thursday report expected, experts could denote a second one, the administration said a more “holistic” measure must be used that includes many more factors.

Regardless of the label, Americans are disgruntled.

According to CNBC’s All-America Economic Survey, only 30 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s work on the economy. The poll of 800 people taken from July 7 to July 10 has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

A majority of those polled — 52 percent — expect the economy to...

'This Book Is Antiracist' is key element of curriculum at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School

A New York City public school encouraged students as young as 10 years old to keep a list of all the "microaggressions" they witnessed, both at school and in their own families, according to materials from the school’s curriculum reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The same students were also asked to list their gender identity—"cisgender," "nonbinary," or "trans"—as well as their sexual orientation on a graded worksheet.

The sixth-grade humanities curriculum from Lower Manhattan Community Middle School, where just 31 percent of students are white, required students to read Tiffany Jewell’s This Book Is Anti-Racist, one of only five books assigned for the 2021-2022 year. The book contains 20 lessons on "how to wake up, take action, and do the work"—including the work of confronting the police, which Jewell suggests white students can do without ending up "in jail or harmed."

"If you are a Black, Brown, or Indigenous Person of the Global Majority, you will need to decide how each outcome could end for you," Jewell writes in a chapter called "Choosing My Path." "White people, this is not something you need to do because you are at the center of the system."

From Tiffany Jewell's ‘This Book Is Anti-Racist'

The book also asks students to surveil their friends and family for racist behavior. "Grab your notebook," one "activity" instructs readers. "Look and listen for the microaggressions around you. Write them down and note your observations." Another activity asks students how "folx" in their families "resisted" or "contributed to racism," defined as the "systemic misuse and abuse of power by institutions."

The curriculum, which went into effect August 2021, came as parents across New York City were mobilizing against critical race theory in public schools—and as education officials across the country were denying that there was any such thing.

"Critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools," Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, asserted in July 2021. Parents "are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history."

One month earlier, New York Regents chancellor Lester Young stated that critical race theory "is not our theory of action" and assured parents that "we are not preparing young people to be activists."

Jewell’s book belies that...

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #552

The Left’s Response To Failure Is To Redefine It As Success

‘Recession’ is far from the first concept the left has simply redefined to deflect the consequences of their failed policies and ideas.

In preparation for the close of the year’s second economic quarter, the White House Council of Economic Advisers has already started the spin: We’re not in a recession if we just redefine what a recession is.

“While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the supposedly nonpartisan group said in a blog post on Thursday.

It’s doubtful the verbal smoke and mirrors will persuade the average Americans whose grocery bills keep growing as fast as their gas tanks empty. A recession is a sustained downturn in economic activity, and many Americans can feel it without knowing what the Q2 numbers are. But it’s far from the first concept the left has simply redefined to deflect the consequences of their failed policies and ideas.

One of their favorite words to redefine, apparently as “full and unchallenged political control,” is democracy. When actual democratic processes are at work — such as when an elected majority votes not to pass a pet piece of legislation, or when issues such as abortion law are left to elected representatives of the people at the state level — leftists scream their favorite catchphrase and call it a “threat to democracy.” They’ve levied that smear at everything from our bicameral legislature to the Supreme Court to the other party in our two-party system. It’s obvious they’re not really talking about democracy in any honest sense of the word. When democracy is a threat to their power, it simply gets redefined.

Another word that’s undergone a 180-degree redefinition is racism. No longer is it considered racist to treat someone differently based on his or her skin color, and not racist to value all human beings equally. Instead, if you’re not promoting theories that “remedy … past discrimination [with] present discrimination,” as critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi suggests, you are clearly a racist according to the left’s new dictionary. Do you believe in meritocracy? Racist. Think people are responsible for their own choices, and it’s neither possible nor beneficial for the government to dole out equivalent outcomes to everyone by force? Doubly racist. The new liturgy says that true equality lies in teaching some children that they’re part of a hopelessly oppressive system and other children that they’re...