Our Elites Desperately Want Us to Hate Our Fellow Americans, We Absolutely Have to Resist

Here's Batya Ungar-Sargon, for the Hill:

Washington Post: Americans 'Resigned' to Inflation, 'Feeling Better' About Dealing With It

 Yeah, I'm sure.

At AoSHQ, "Funflation!"

President Biden's Primetime 'Soul of the Nation' Address Demonizes Tens of Millions of Americans (VIDEO)

If you're going to attack "MAGA Republicans" in a primetime address to the nation on the Donald Trump GOP's threats to democracy, just know that you're literally attacking millions upon millions of voters who pulled the lever for the Donald in 2020 (not to mention 2016). 

No, not everyone who voted for Trump was MAGA, and Old Joe (Stalin?) duly slides that in as an afterthought. No, he attacked the movement for America First principes as the most dangerous threat to our nation today. Really? That movement includes untold red-blooded patriotic Americans who have nothing to do with any of the "violence" the president decries. Biden makes no clear distinction. I mean, shoot, you don't need to put "MAGA" in front of "Republicans." They're all evil for leftist totalitarians. 

Anyone with a brain knows this is all politics, not abouit saving the union from incipient fascist tyranny. Biden's screed was a pre-midterm salvo to demonize the opposition, MAGA or not. That's it. The media's the bullhorn: You know, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" and all the other bullshit posituring by our elite betters in America's newsrooms. It's disgusting and should be repudiated, and with luck it will be in November. Don't trust the polls. Sure, leftists have been mobilized by the pro-life Dobbs ruling in June, but it's not the poor and down and out, who are destitute, homeless, mentally ill, drug-addled, and on Medicaid, public assistance, and SSI. 

Nope, it's white, wealthy "progressive" women. They're the one's who're pissed off, and they're driving this so-called surge of pro-choice voter agitation. They don't give a shit about the poor. They're craven virtue-signalers who claim they're better than you (they're not). 

Biden? His speech? THIS IS WHY AMERICANS HATE POLITICS.

See, Roger Kimball, at the Spectator, "Biden Declares War on Half the Country":

The malignant and divisive spirit of his speech will not soon be quelled.

Joe Biden’s speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on Thursday was one of the most remarkable in living memory. By “remarkable,” I hasten to add that I do not mean “good.” On the contrary, it was a breathtaking act of what the psychoanalysts call “projection,” blaming others for the bad things you do yourself.

The speech itself was a malignant act of demagoguery that will have colonels and generalissimos everywhere catching their breath with envy. The neo-totalitarian stage set, replete with red lighting effects and military personal flanking the shouting, gesticulating Biden, was right out of central casting. Next time, perhaps Biden will wear epaulettes along with his signature aviators.

The speech was billed as a reflection on the “soul of the nation.” Remember, Biden was sold to the country as Mr. Normality, as someone who would bind up the nations’s wounds after four years of the bad, horrible, no good, unacceptable, supremely divisive Donald Trump.

It hasn’t worked out that way, notwithstanding Trump’s occasional zingers and rhetorical molotov cocktails that have kept the fires of outrage burning. In this respect, Biden’s speech typified the new Democratic dispensation, according to which the world is divided sharply in two. The good guys are those who espouse the Democratic agenda. The bad guys are anyone who dissents. What we are seeing, in fact, is the promulgation of a neo-Manichean philosophy. That heretical sect, named for a third-century A.D. Parthian seer called Mani, was an astringently dualistic creed that divided the world into light and dark, the saved and the damned. According to the creed of Biden and the elites who formulate his thoughts and speeches, the radical Democratic agenda of climate change, “green” intimidation, wealth redistribution, and sexual perversion is the gospel of light. Outer darkness is occupied by people who espouse such traditional American values as hard work, frugality, patriotism, individual liberty, and the canons of private property that guarantee those rights. It is a strange and unforgiving religion, one whose primary sacrament is excommunication. Ultimately, as some wag put it, its goal is a world in which everything that is not prohibited is mandatory.

That is the background. You often hear the world “democracy” uttered in these heady precincts, usually in the now-noxious phrase “our democracy” (translation: their prerogative”). As I note in a column on “Joe Biden and the Sovietization of America” for the October edition of the Speccie, it is a world in which “democracy” really means “rule by Democrats.” To the question “was the election fair,” what you need to know in order to answer is who won. If it was the Democrats, then the election was fair. If the Democrats lost, then the election was stolen.

In any event, Biden’s speech consisted of a series accusations directed at “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans [who] represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”

Lest you think that attack on 74 million Trump supporters was an aberration, note that a week earlier at a Maryland fundraiser, Biden had insisted that the problem for those wishing to conserve the “soul of America” was “not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the…semi-fascism” of the MAGA agenda.

The sweeping denunciation of half the country was perhaps the thing that caught the alarmed attention of most observers. Also important was that element of projection I mentioned. Biden’s brief against Trump and “the entire philosophy” of MAGA rested primarily on three accusations...

 Keep reading.

Biden Will Summon His Supporters to Wage a War For the 'Soul of the Nation' Against Republicans Who Are 'Semi-Fascists' and a 'Threat to Democracy'

At AoSHQ, "If someone starts talking about political violence, and you try to talk him down, he'll say 'This country was founded upon revolutionary violence' and something like 'The right of the people to rebel against a tyrant is written out in black and white in the Declaration of Independence'."

U.S. Teacher Shortage: How Bad Is It?

Well, there seems to be no shortage of purple magenta-haired woke elementary school teachers grooming children across the country, but heh, I'm sure it's a problem. I mean, with the low pay, lousy benefits, anger at bureaucratic idiot bosses, the leftist ideological takeover of the schools, and everything else FUBAR with the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, who can blame them? 

At the New York Times, "How Bad Is the Teacher Shortage? Depends Where You Live":

Urgently needed: teachers in struggling districts, certified in math or special education. Perks: maybe a pay raise, or how about a four-day week?

The new fall semester has just begun in Mesa, Ariz., and Westwood High School is short on math teachers.

A public school that serves more than 3,000 students in the populous desert city east of Phoenix, Westwood still has three unfilled positions in that subject. The principal, Christopher Gilmore, has never started the year there with so many math positions open.

“It’s a little bit unnerving,” he said, “going into a school year knowing that we don’t have a full staff.”

Westwood, where most students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, is one of many public schools across the United States that are opening their doors with fewer teachers than they had hoped for. According to one national survey by Education Week, nearly three-fourths of principals and district officials said this summer that the number of teaching applicants was not enough to fill their open positions. Other surveys released this year have suggested that parents are deeply concerned about staffing and that many more teachers are eyeing the exits.

But while the pandemic has created an urgent search for teachers in some areas, not every district is suffering from shortages. The need for teachers is driven by a complicated interplay of demand and supply in a tight job market. Salary matters, and so does location: Well-paying suburban schools can usually attract more candidates.

If anything, experts say, the recent pandemic turmoil can be expected to worsen old inequities.

“It’s complex, and it does go back before the pandemic,” said Desiree Carver-Thomas, an analyst with the Learning Policy Institute. “Schools serving more students of color and students from low-income families bear the brunt of teacher shortages, oftentimes.”

For many years, it has also been particularly hard to find teachers for subjects like math and special education, or to fill spots at rural schools. And there has always been a dire need for more teachers of color in the United States. According to federal data collected during the school year ending in 2018, nearly 80 percent of public schoolteachers were white. Most of their students were not.

In Arizona, where starting salaries for teachers are lower than the national average, the shortages are “severe” across the board, said Justin Wing, an assistant superintendent of human resources for Mesa Public Schools, the district where Mr. Gilmore works.

“I feel like it’s been that way for probably at least 10 years,” said Mr. Wing, who is also an analyst for the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association. But this year, he added, seems even worse.

He attributes the problem in part to low pay, and he has watched districts in neighboring states, like Texas and Nevada, rub salt in the wound by advertising their teaching salaries on social media and on billboards along Arizona highways.

According to Mr. Wing’s data from the last school year, nearly four-fifths of teaching positions (measured in terms of full-time equivalencies) in Arizona schools had to be covered in less-than-ideal ways — by support staff, for example, or teachers in training.

And nearly one-third of positions remained vacant altogether, which often meant that existing teachers had to take on more classes.

The challenge for struggling districts is to cover positions in a way that not only fills seats but also serves students, said Tequilla Brownie, the chief executive of TNTP, a nonprofit that provides consulting services for districts on staffing and student achievement.

“Everybody right now is just talking about, frankly, warm bodies,” she said. “The quality of teachers still matters. You never will get to quality if you don’t get to quantity first.”

Over the past two years, several states including New Mexico, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi have tried to address or pre-empt shortages by raising teacher salaries.

Others have loosened certification requirements. In Arizona, a new law makes it easier for aspiring teachers without bachelor’s degrees to gain work experience in the classroom. In Florida, where state officials last year reported more than 4,000 teacher vacancies, some military veterans can be granted temporary teaching certificates.

And in some rural districts, where raises may be out of reach, school officials are putting entire school days on the chopping block.

In Missouri, where teachers receive among the lowest salaries on average in the country, John Downs, the superintendent of the rural Hallsville School District, said that the pool of qualified applicants has all but dried up in recent years. A few days before the start of the school year, positions in speech language pathology and math were still unfilled.

This year, Hallsville schools are trying to entice educators with a four-day workweek. “We’re competing against more affluent districts who can offer more lucrative salary benefit packages,” Mr. Downs said. “So we decided we needed to think outside of the box.”

Hallsville is not alone. In Missouri, 25 percent of all districts will be on a four-day schedule this fall. The condensed week is common in New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Idaho and South Dakota, and is beginning to emerge in other states like Texas...

Still more.

The Unmaking of American History by the Woke Mob

For the full background, see "Presentism, Race and Trolls," at Inside Higher Ed.

From Dominic Green, at WSJ, "Progressive scholars increasingly abandon the past to focus on present-day politics":

Academic historians are losing their sense of the past. In his August column for the American Historical Association’s journal, Perspectives on History, James H. Sweet warned that academic history has become so “presentist” that it is losing touch with its subject, the world before yesterday. Mr. Sweet, who is the association’s president and teaches at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, observed that the “allure of political relevance” is drawing students away from pre-1800 history and toward “contemporary social justice issues” such as “race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism.” When historians become activists, he wrote, the past becomes “an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions.”

Mr. Sweet knows his audience, so he did his best to appease the crocodile of political correctness. He denounced Justice Clarence Thomas for a gun-rights decision that “cherry-picks historical data” and criticized Justice Samuel Alito for taking the word “history” in vain 67 times in his Dobbs abortion opinion. But Mr. Sweet also pointed out that Nikole Hannah-Jones’s “1619 Project” isn’t accurate history, and that “bad history,” however good it makes us feel, yields bad politics. “If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise.”

History’s armies of nonacademic readers will find this obvious and undeniable. Mr. Sweet’s academic peers, however, tore him to pieces on Twitter, accusing him of sexism, racism, gratuitous maleness and excessive whiteness.

“Gaslight. Gatekeep. Goatee,” said Laura Miller of Brandeis University, detecting patriarchal privilege written on Mr. Sweet’s chin. Benjamin Siegel of Boston University, who thinks his politically correct profession is “leveraged towards racist ideologies,” called the essay “malpractice.” Dan Royles of Florida International University accused Mr. Sweet of “logical incoherence,” which is academic-speak for “idiot.” Kathryn Wilson of Georgia State detected an even more heinous error, “misrepresentation of how contemporary social justice concerns inform theory and methodology.”

Other users accused Mr. Sweet of using a rhetorical device called the “white we,” pitching for a guest slot on Tucker Carlson’s show, and writing “MAGA history.” Many called any questioning of the “1619 Project” racist. David Austin Walsh of the University of Virginia advised historians to support the project regardless of whether they thought it good history, because criticism would be “weaponized by the right.”

Mr. Sweet responded with the bravery that defines the modern academic. He apologized on the AHA’s website for the “harm to colleagues, the discipline, and the Association” that his “ham-fisted attempt at provocation” had caused, especially to his “Black colleagues and friends,” and begged that he be allowed to “redeem” himself.

The AHA, which had done nothing to stem the tide of insults from its members, prevented nonfollowers from commenting on its Twitter feed, because, it said, “trolls” and “bad-faith actors” had joined the debate. One of the bad-faith actors was a racist agitator, Richard Spencer. His contribution, alarmingly, was hardly trolling. Mr. Spencer pointed out that Mr. Sweet was merely repeating the advice of the eminent 19th-century historian Otto von Ranke, who told historians to go into the archives and tell history “as it really happened.” We know a profession is in trouble when it takes the worst kind of amateur to state the obvious.

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child,” Cicero once wrote. “For what is the worth of a human life if it is not woven into the life of our ancestors by the record of history?” Even Ms. Hannah-Jones would agree with that. The AHA’s activist wing, however, disagrees. Like Cicero, who was both a politician and a historian, they see history as a rhetorical resource. Unlike Cicero, they see nothing good in their people’s history and only wickedness in their ancestors.

When the purpose of history changes from knowledge of the past to political power in the present and future, historians become mere propagandists. Academics who succumb to the sugar rush of activism lose their sense of balance. Meanwhile, the AHA’s annual reports show that undergraduates and graduates are voting with their enrollments, with a related decline in job opportunities for holders of new doctorates. In 2016-17 alone, undergraduate enrollment fell by 7.7%. The number of new doctorates fell by about 15% between 2014 and 2019, and the number of job openings has halved since 2008. The latest AHA Jobs Report is a threnody of “program closures, enrollment declines, and faculty layoffs.” Signs of stabilization, it reckons, are a “false floor.” Why study history if all it equips you for is a nasty and crowded climb up the greasy pole of academic preferment? Much easier to pursue activism through the modish triad of sex, race and gender studies.

All of which tends to confirm Mr. Sweet’s observations about the perils of presentism and activism...

 

Student Debt Forgiveness Will Make the Problem Worse (VIDEO)

Here's the beautiful Inez Feltscher Stepman (currently my crush on Twitter), for Prager Univerity:

The Mar-a-Lago Affidavit: Is That All There Is?

At the Wall Street Journal, "The redacted 38-pages add to the evidence that the FBI search really was all about a dispute over documents":

A federal judge on Friday released a heavily redacted version of the FBI affidavit used to justify the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, and we can’t help but wonder is that it? This is why agents descended on a former President’s residence like they would a mob boss?

It’s possible the redactions in the 38-page document release contain some undisclosed bombshell. But given the contours of what the affidavit and attachments reveal, this really does seem to boil down to a fight over the handling of classified documents. The affidavit’s long introduction and other unredacted paragraphs all point to concern by the FBI and the National Archives with the documents Mr. Trump retained at Mar-a-Lago and his lack of cooperation in not returning all that the feds wanted.

A separate filing making the case for the redactions, also released Friday, focused on the need for witness and agent protection from being publicly identified. That filing also contains no suggestion of any greater charges or a larger investigation than the dispute over his handling of the documents.

As always with Mr. Trump, he seems to have been his own worst enemy in this dispute. He and his staff appear to have been sloppy, even cavalier, in storing the documents. Classified records found in boxes were mixed in with “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes,” and presidential correspondence, the affidavit says. This fanned suspicion that important documents were still floating around the house, where bad actors hanging around the Mar-a-Lago resort might pilfer them.

The affidavit also contains references to comments by Mr. Trump and his associates that didn’t tell the truth about what was classified or what he had turned over to the National Archives before the search. This appears to have frustrated the bureau enough that it felt he might be guilty of obstruction of justice by his lack of cooperation. To put it another way, the FBI thought Mr. Trump was behaving badly, as he so often does.

But that didn’t mean the FBI and Justice Department had to resort to a warrant and federal-agent search that they knew would be redolent of criminal behavior. They had to suggest probable cause of criminal acts to get their extravagant warrant, which they knew would create a political firestorm.

Instead they could have gone to a district court and sought an order for the proper handling and storage of documents. It surely would have been executed. If Mr. Trump then failed to comply, he could have been held in contempt. On the evidence in the warrant and the affidavit, and even based on the leaks to the press so far which all focus on the demand for documents, the search on Mar-a-Lago was disproportionate to the likely offense...

 

Republicans, Once Outraged by Mar-a-Lago Search, Become Quieter as Details Emerge

 At the New York Times: 

In the minutes and hours after the F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida this month, his supporters did not hesitate to denounce what they saw as a blatant abuse of power and outrageous politicization of the Justice Department.

But with the release of a redacted affidavit detailing the justification for the search, the former president’s allies were largely silent, a potentially telling reaction with ramifications for his political future.

“I would just caution folks not to draw too many conclusions,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican, said on Fox News. It was a starkly different admonition from his earlier condemnations of what he said were “politically motivated actions.”

Some Republicans will no doubt rally around Mr. Trump and his claim that he is once again being targeted by a rogue F.B.I. that is still out to get him. His former acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said on Twitter that “this raid was, in fact, just about documents,” which he called “simply outrageous.” Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona and an ardent Trump ally, was on the right-wing broadcaster Newsmax denouncing the F.B.I. as politically biased, though he notably did not defend the former president’s possession of highly classified documents.

But generally, even the most bombastic Republicans — Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Jim Jordan of Ohio — were at least initially focused elsewhere. Ms. Greene was posting on Friday about border “invasions.” Ms. Boebert noted on Twitter the anniversary of the suicide bombing of U.S. service members at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. Mr. Jordan was focused on an interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder. None tweeted about the affidavit.

The accusations against Mr. Trump have become increasingly serious. Classified documents dealing with matters such as Mr. Trump’s correspondences with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un were stored in unsecured rooms at Mar-a-Lago, The New York Times reported this month. The untempered attacks on the F.B.I. after the initial search led to threats against federal law enforcement, opening up Republicans — long the self-proclaimed party of law and order — to charges from Democrats that they were trying to “defund” the agency.

And voters are again distracted by Mr. Trump in the political spotlight, even as Republicans try to direct their attention toward the economy and soaring inflation on a day when the Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said efforts to control rising prices would exact pain on Americans.

All of this could mean that enough Republican voters grow weary of the division and drama around Mr. Trump and are ready to move on...

 

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Smears Republcans as 'Fascists'

On Twitter:

If this is what they believe—and they do—how do they allow “fascists” and “attackers of our democracy” to vote at all? Do you understand that this is where it’s going? https://t.co/7ndezQC9HQ

— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) August 27, 2022

Biden, Without Congressional Authority, Announces He's Forgiving Student Loans For His Voters -- And Claiming That the 'Emergency' Powers He Has Due to Covid Allow Him to Act As a Tyrant, Apparently Forever

PREVIOUSLY: "Biden's Student Loan 'Forgiveness' Is an Abuse of Power."

At AoSHQ, "Note that Biden already declared an end to the covid emergency when he canceled Trump's Remain in Mexico policy, and his CDC just announced that we're effectively back to normal. But Biden won't formally say the "emergency" is over -- so he can continue acting as tyrant when he finds it politically useful to do so."

Biden's Student Loan 'Forgiveness' Is an Abuse of Power

PREVIOUSLY: "Outrage! Biden to Cancel $10,000 in Student Debt for Those Making Less Than $125,000 or Less Per Year."

From Dave Harsanyi, at the Federalist, "… not to mention a moral hazard, counterproductive, and fundamentally immoral."

Outrage! Biden to Cancel $10,000 in Student Debt for Those Making Less Than $125,000 or Less Per Year

This is fucking outrageous.

My grad school loans are just now nearly paid off --- 23 years after I finished my Ph.D. at UCSB. Is Old Joe going to make the debt relief retroactive, for the millions upon millions of judicious and hard-working Americans who made good on the debt they took out? 

Completely un-American, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed debt cancellation as "socialist."

At the Los Angeles Times, "Biden will cancel $10,000 of student debt for many borrowers":

Individuals earning less than $125,000 annually would qualify for relief and those who received Pell grants could receive an additional $10,000.

WASHINGTON — President Biden moved Wednesday to cancel $10,000 in student debt for individuals earning less than $125,000 annually while extending a pause on loan repayments for all borrowers through the end of the year, all as part of a broader effort to overhaul the federal system and ease financial burdens for the middle class.

Biden’s action will also make people who received Pell grants to help cover the cost of college eligible for up to $20,000 in loan relief. And a new income-based repayment cap will ensure borrowers pay no more than 5% of their monthly income toward their undergraduate loans as long as they aren’t behind on payments. Some analysts believe that change may prove even more significant than the debt forgiveness.

Lamenting that “an entire generation is now saddled with unsustainable debt” because the cost of higher education has skyrocketed in recent years, Biden described his action as a matter of economic fairness that will “provide more breathing room for people” and boost America’s competitiveness.

“My plan is responsible and fair. It focuses the benefit on middle-class and working families. It helps both current and future borrowers and it will fix a badly broken system,” Biden said. “It’s about opportunity. It’s about giving people a fair shot.”

The overall package, which Biden said will benefit 43 million Americans, is a win for activists who have pushed for such action as a matter of economic fairness. But the amount of debt Biden has decided to erase is less than many activists had sought, complicating an issue the White House hopes will boost Democrats in the midterm election and drawing criticism from both parties. While progressives had hoped Biden would go even further, Republicans and some moderate Democrats bristled at the price-tag, asserting that spending an estimated $400-600 billion to cover the forgiven loans would exacerbate inflation.

“This announcement is gallingly reckless — with the national debt approaching record levels and inflation surging, it will make both worse,” said Maya McGuinness, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington organization that opposes the student loan forgiveness program.

Biden, who returned from a two-week vacation Wednesday morning, had vowed to act before Aug. 31, when the latest pandemic-driven moratorium on federal student loan payments runs out. He said this extension would be the last one and that payments would resume in January 2023.

“It’s time for the payments to resume,” he said.

President Trump first suspended payments in March 2020, and Biden has granted four extensions. So far, the suspensions have cost the federal government more than $100 billion. More than 40 million Americans owe a collective $1.6 trillion in federal student loans.

A fight over student loans could slow the Democrats’ recent momentum and threaten their coalition’s cohesion. The president and his party have seen their poll numbers rise in recent months, buoyed by a series of events that have altered the political landscape in their favor.

The Supreme Court’s late June decision overturning Roe vs. Wade alienated women across political lines. The high-profile hearings further illuminating Trump’s key role inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection received broad television coverage and hardened perceptions of Republicans as the more extreme party. And Democrats’ passage of three major bills — a climate, prescription drug and tax overhaul, new funding to boost domestic manufacturing of microchips and enhanced healthcare for veterans exposed to toxic chemicals on the battlefield — has shown the public that Biden is far from a do-nothing president.

Before the abortion decision, the Jan. 6 hearings and the flurry of new legislation, some senior Biden aides believed significant student loan debt forgiveness was one of the few measures that could excite the Democratic base and help the party survive a tough election cycle. Despite public and private pressure from Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Biden has long questioned whether forgiving as much as $50,000 in debt would be prudent.

Schumer spoke by phone with Biden on Tuesday night “to make a final push to the president to cancel as much student loan debt as he can,” according to a Democrat familiar with the conversation. On Wednesday, Schumer and Warren sought to quell criticism from the left, issuing a joint statement heralding Biden’s final decision as a historic first step.

“With the flick of a pen, President Biden has taken a giant step forward in addressing the student debt crisis by cancelling significant amounts of student debt for millions of borrowers. The positive impacts of this move will be felt by families across the country, particularly in minority communities, and is the single most effective action that the President can take on his own to help working families and the economy,” their statement said. “No president or Congress has done more to relieve the burden of student debt and help millions of Americans make ends meet. Make no mistake, the work — our work — will continue as we pursue every available path to address the student debt crisis, help close the racial wealth gap for borrowers, and keep our economy growing.”

Some activists also cheered the announcement. “Today, with President Biden’s announcement, 12 million American borrowers have had their educational debts erased,” said Melissa Byrne, executive director of We the 45 Million, a group that advocates for student debt forgiveness. “This is a historic first step — establishing the clear authority that the president has to cancel student debt — but this should just be the beginning.”

But key Democratic constituencies, including young voters, Black Americans and civil rights groups like the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, have pushed hard for more forgiveness, and may be disappointed.

Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, had blasted Biden in a statement Tuesday, stating that if reports of the president having settled on $10,000 in debt forgiveness are correct, “we’ve got a problem,” likening the decision to past federal policies that have been detrimental to Black people...

I took out zero loans for my Bachelor's degree. I worked, and hard. At Fresno State, where I took my B.A. political science, I worked 35 hours a week pumping gas at the local Chevon station, not far from my dad's house. It was 2:00 to 9:00pm Sundays through Thurdays, and 4:00pm to Midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. I started that job at $4.25 miniumum wage, only getting bumped once with a raise to $4.75. On my days off I'd stay on campus all day, after classes, going to the cafeteria, the library, and the student union to hang out and study. My time was completely taken up and I had little for nightlife. I met my future wife in my last year, and she moved to Santa Barbara with me (before we were married) after I was accepted into the Ph.D. program. 

I paid my dues. 

In graduate school I ended up taking out about $65,000 to $70,000 total. I could have borrowed much, much more, but I was careful. I worked weekends (again at a Chevron station in downtown Santa Barbara) my first year in the program. I could've borrowed more, but my (future) wife and I didn't want to get too deep into debt. We had no idea I'd get a full four-year ride starting in my second year, the U.C. Regents Fellowship, which paid for everything. That was merit based, by the way. I fucking earned that fellowship by kicking ass that first year. I have great memories and wouldn't take back a thing.

I know, though, my story is like so many others, folks who themselves and their families scrimped and saved just for the chance to attend college, much less a Ph.D program. *That's the American way.* If Republicans don't campaigh the hell out of this issue they're bloody stupid. LOTS of folks will be pissed that their working- and middle-class tax dollars are going toward debt bailouts for college graduates who make more than they do, and will make way more in the future. 

It's class warfare. It's a fundamental violation of society's social contract, and bitterly unfair. 

Still more at that top link.

California Voters Say Biden Shouldn't Seek a Second Term

 Heh. 

California's the looniest leftist state. That voters here reject Bident for 2024 is something. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "California voters favor Newsom over Harris, don’t want Biden to run again, poll finds."

Despite Climate Bill, Electric Cars Will Remain Out of Reach for Many

Well, blow me down! 

At the New York Times, "Electric Cars Too Costly for Many, Even With Aid in Climate Bill ":

Battery-powered vehicles are considered essential to the fight against climate change, but most models are aimed at the affluent.

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.

Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate, the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit.

But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars more affordable and to get enough of them on the road to put a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.

Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate, the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit.

But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars more affordable and to get enough of them on the road to put a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions. High prices are caused by shortages of batteries, of raw materials like lithium, and of components like semiconductors. Strong demand for electric vehicles from affluent buyers means that carmakers have little incentive to sell cheaper models. For low- and middle-income people who don’t have their own garages or driveways, another obstacle is the lack of enough public facilities to recharge.

The bottlenecks will take years to unclog. Carmakers and suppliers of batteries and chips must build and equip new factories. Commodity suppliers have to open new mines and build refineries. Charging companies are struggling to install new stations fast enough. In the meantime, electric vehicles remain largely the province of the rich.

To some extent, the carmakers are following their usual game plan. They have always introduced new technology at a luxury price. With time, the new features and gadgets make their way into cheaper cars. But emission-free technology has an urgency that voice navigation or massaging seats did not. Transportation accounts for 27 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Battery-powered cars produce far less carbon dioxide than vehicles that run on gasoline or diesel. That’s true even accounting for the emissions from generating electricity and from manufacturing batteries, according to numerous studies.

Only a few years ago analysts were predicting that electric vehicles would soon be as cheap to buy as gasoline cars. Factoring in the savings on fuel and maintenance, going electric would be a no-brainer.

Instead, soaring prices of commodities like lithium, an essential ingredient in batteries, helped raise the average sticker price of an electric vehicle by 14 percent last year to $66,000, $20,000 more than the average for all new cars, according to Kelley Blue Book.

Demand for electric vehicles is so strong that models like the Ford Mach-E are effectively sold out, and there are long wait times for others. Tesla’s website informs buyers that they can’t expect delivery of a Model Y, with a purchase price of $66,000, until sometime between January and April 2023.

With so much demand, carmakers have little reason to target budget-minded buyers. Economy car stalwarts like Toyota and Honda are not yet selling significant numbers of all-electric models in the United States. Scarcity has been good for Ford, Mercedes and other carmakers that are selling fewer cars than before the pandemic but recording fat profits.

Automakers are “not giving any more discounts because demand is higher than the supply,” said Axel Schmidt, a senior managing director at Accenture who oversees the consulting firm’s automotive division. “The general trend currently is no one is interested in low prices.”

Advertised prices for electric vehicles tend to start at around $40,000, not including a federal tax credit of $7,500. Good luck finding an electric car at that semi-affordable price.

Ford has stopped taking orders for Lightning electric pickups, with an advertised starting price of about $40,000, because it can’t make them fast enough. Hyundai advertises that its electric Ioniq 5 starts at about $40,000. But the cheapest models available from dealers in the New York area, based on a search of the company’s website, were around $49,000 before taxes.

Tesla’s Model 3, which the company began producing in 2017, was supposed to be an electric car for average folks, with a base price of $35,000. But Tesla has since raised the price for the cheapest version to $47,000...

Shoot, $35,000's still not cheap. Some schlup from the barrio, South Central, or any urban 'hood near you ain't buying this car, or any EV, for that matter. These cars are for the leftist climate change psychos. Teslas are everywhere in Irvine. They're boring af. They all look the same. Nothing against them in principle. But if that's your status symbol gtfo. (*Eye-rol*.)

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The Dam Breaks: Key Dems Run Away From Biden '24

From Byron York, at the Washington Examiner, "You've seen the polls showing that large majorities of Democratic voters want the party to pick a new nominee for president in 2024, bypassing incumbent President Joe Biden. Now we're seeing the living embodiment of those polls as some important Democratic lawmakers distance themselves from, or outright oppose, a reelection run by the nearly 80-year-old president."

The Left's Assault on the Middle Class (VIDEO)

Here's Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, for the Rising on the Hill TV: 

Professor Robert George: Constitutional Republic, Not Pure Democracy (VIDEO)

At Prager University:

National Democratic Redistricting Committee Backs 'Far-Right' Candidates in a Major Way (VIDEO)

At MSNBC, on YouTube.

And from Representative Peter Meijer, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "Why the Democrats Are Funding My Far-Right Opponent: They said Trump was a threat to democracy. Now they are propping up my MAGA challenger."

as a lifelong Dem voter, reading this paragraph felt kind of like finding a writhing nest of venomous snakes nestled in the foundations of my own house; I'm trying to think of a better, more nuanced word than "disgusting," but good lordhttps://t.co/TOZGLzFQWb pic.twitter.com/GI8H6mCjFQ

— Kat Rosenfield (@katrosenfield) August 1, 2022

Definition of a Recession

From Douglas Murray, at the New York Post, "Undocumented, underhoused chestfed kids are not in a recession, say Dems":

“We should avoid a semantic battle” said Janet Yellen yesterday. “A what?” In short it seems what the Treasury Secretary means is that we should not use the word “recession.”

That is a shame, because people, including Yellen’s boss, used to like to use the word a lot. In October 2020, when he was running for office, Joe Biden said “President Obama and I left Donald Trump a booming economy – and he caused a recession. He squandered it just like he has everything else he’s inherited in his life.” He said the same thing in September 2020, claiming that American was in a “recession created by Donald Trump’s negligence.”

Fast forward a couple of years and The White House is now reframing the meaning of the word and warning us all not to use it. It is true that until yesterday it was generally agreed that two straight quarters of negative GDP growth was the common definition of a recession. But yesterday President Biden said, “That doesn’t sound like a recession to me.” This fact should surprise no one.

Because re-naming things is one of the left’s favorite pastimes. If you cannot change the facts then you can at least change the language around the facts. By doing so you can massage the facts, make them less concerning and in the process wish reality away. For a time, at least...

Keep reading.