Joe Biden: a legend in his own mind

 Joe Biden owes half of America an apology for calling them racists - American Thinker   "Speaking in Atlanta last week, President Joe Biden made a startling declaration: those who disagree with him about how best to ensure the integrity of the American electoral process, he told Americans, are modern-day Confederates, racist traitors who are supporters of slave-holding rebel president Jefferson Davis.

"If I could, I would tell President Biden about the history of my family — a family of Americans who disagree with him, and whom he now condemns as racist traitors.

"My father served in the United States Army from 1942 to 1945.  A grandchild of immigrants, and the only child of an aged widow, he answered the call gladly when his nation needed him.  Raised in extreme poverty, he saw Army life as a step up — he actually thought Army food seemed decent, and there was usually plenty of it — and he was happy to do what his nation asked, willingly risking his life to fight Hitler's racist legions and to stop the spread of the racist ideology of Nazism." . . .

Granted, President Trump said many harmful things, and he made statements that many of us believe did damage to our national political culture.  But Donald Trump never uttered any statement that was more deeply false, more harmfully divisive, and in many senses more profoundly evil than Biden's invitation to regard all of those Americans who disagree with him as violent, racist traitors to our nation.. . . 

 Payback: Joe Biden learns the hard way about the wisdom of declaring his fellow Democrats racists - American Thinker

What made it payback is that Joe's been incompetent in office since virtually the first day of his presidency. This letter outlining Biden's incompetence on COVID tests is just one little festering thing in his presidency. Biden's also been flamingly incompetent on the open border, the recrudescence of inflation, the Afghanistan pullout, the supply chain breakdown, and his many foreign policy failures on Iran, China, and Russia.  Nobody wrote a letter blasting Biden for those monster blunders. But now that Biden's taken to insulting his party's allies, and inadvertently suggesting that his party is full of racists, (which if he believed it, he should resign over) now the criticisms are coming. 

Springsteen Gives In To The Man

 The American Conservative

By selling his song collection for half a billion dollars, has the Boss thrown everything else away?

"Forget Omicron—Bruce Springsteen made an already-tumultuous year much worse.

"In mid-December, anonymous sources leaked that Springsteen had sold his entire song catalogue to Sony Music Entertainment for $500 million, the biggest deal of its kind in music history. It dwarfs the reported $300 million Universal paid for Bob Dylan’s song-writing catalogue in December 2020.

"The sale gives Sony ownership of 300 songs spanning 20 studio albums and 23 live recordings, including the intellectual property rights. Beyond reporting those basic details, most media seem to be burying their heads in the sand about the deeper implications of our beloved Boss—a man who made his career singing in defense of the working-class American—finally giving in to The Man." . . . 

[Dominic] Green recorded rock star Alice Cooper’s observation that asking a rock star about politics is like asking the garbage man about nuclear physics. That hasn’t stopped Springsteen from taking part in Renegades, a recent podcast featuring him and President Obama. Writer and musician Kit Wilson noted the fly in the ointment of the original idea: having “two attractive, highly successful, almost maddeningly cool men” talking “about being outsiders, all the while trading chummy stories about exclusive parties at the White House and backslapping each other.” . . .

Bruce on Broadway - and out of touch - The Spectator World  . . ."While Springsteen contended with the contradictions of success, America’s white working and middle classes tumbled into unemployment and opioid addiction. Springsteen, once the laureate of the thwarted desires and escapist leisure of ‘the working life’, has struggled to narrate its decline. Instead, as album titles like Tom Joad’s Dream suggest, he has retreated into FDR-era fantasy, mixing sub-Steinbeck acoustic plaints about the lot of undocumented fruit pickers with bombastic rockers like ‘We Take Care Of Our Own’, a queasily populist mix of bitterness and patriotism.

" ‘There’s nothing ideological about it,’ Springsteen says of his acoustic run. But the origins of Springsteen on Broadway could not be more partisan. In the last days of the Obama presidency, when nearly 70% of Americans thought the country was ‘heading in the wrong direction’, Springsteen gave a private show to some two hundred Obama staffers in the Rose Room of the White House. Springsteen enjoyed that evening so much that he decided to share it with the rest the country. He’s like a bandleader wanting to record his orchestra because they went down so well on the Titanic.

"Alice Cooper has said that asking a rock star about politics is like ‘asking the garbage man’ about ‘nuclear physics’. Still, as Springsteen limbered up for the Great White Way, he offered belated thoughts about the decline of American communities. ‘The consequences of de-industrialization in the Seventies and Eighties,’ he told the Times, ‘were never really addressed by either Republicans or Democrats.’

"Not that this stopped Bruce from endorsing Bill Clinton, the architect of the Great Offshoring. Or Al Gore and John Kerry, who promised to continue it, while placing further environmental restrictions on American industry. In 2012, Bruce even campaigned with Barack Obama, whose Trans-Pacific Partnership would have offshored the last jobs in working-class America.

"Springsteen is no ordinary talent, and no ordinary person, even if he insists on dressing down and speaking dumb. The Democratic Party is no longer the party of the ordinary man and woman, either." . . .

Compare Biden’s Rhetoric to Churchill’s -

Churchill’s political power was built on his love of his country and its cause, so that even his political opponents had to be respected and honored.

 The American Spectator   " Today’s leaders present words their consultants have assured them are focus-group tested.

"I was still in grade school when I first heard Winston Churchill’s voice. A family friend had a record called I Can Hear It Now that was put together by Edward R. Murrow, that great voice of radio news during World War II.

"Murrow had put together a series of sound clips from the ’30s and ’40s, covering the period from FDR’s accession to the White House until the Japanese surrender on the deck of the battleship Missouri at the end of the war. For someone with an endless appetite for the history of the world wars, this was a feast.

"Murrow had been in London during the German Blitz, and he had brought home the drama by holding the microphone open to hear the wailing of the air-raid sirens, the clatter of the feet of Londoners running to shelter, and the sounds of the explosions of the anti-aircraft guns and the bombs. With great emotion, Murrow introduced clips of Churchill’s most powerful speeches by saying, “The time had come to mobilize the English language and send it into battle, a spearhead of hope for Britain and the world.”

" Then came that great voice, saying words that were so deeply lived and felt that they inspired a nearly beaten Britain, all alone against the Nazi storm surge, to hold on and endure. That voice also displayed to a transfixed world a determination to fight for freedom at all costs.

"Ever since, I have measured the voices of political leaders against that voice." . . .

National School Board Association ‘At Risk Of Total Collapse’ Following Letter Comparing Parents To ‘Domestic Terrorists’

 The Daily Wire

"The National School Boards Association (NSBA) continues to struggle following its controversial letter to the Biden administration urging the Department of Justice to target parents who speak out at school board meetings.

"According to The Washington Post, the organization is “at risk of total collapse” following the ongoing controversy.

“Nineteen mostly GOP-led states have withdrawn from the association or promised to when this year’s membership expires, and six members of what was a 19-person board have left. Several states are discussing forming an alternative association for school boards. A new executive director of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) is working to save the organization, lobbying individual states to reconsider, but so far he has not persuaded any of them to change their minds,” the outlet reported.

"John Heim, the new executive director, told the Post that he hopes “they’ll give us a chance” and that his goal is to “rebuild trust” in the organization.

"The news comes after it was reported that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona “solicited” the NSBA’s letter comparing parents protesting COVID-19 policies and the teaching of Critical Race Theory to domestic terrorism, The Daily Wire reported. The letter suggested that “as these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

" 'The DOJ used the letter to direct the FBI to assist local law enforcement and use federal laws like the Patriot Act to crack down on parent protests. Newly released emails show that Cardona reached out to the NSBA to write the letter." . . .

Has Secretary Cardona Declared an Unwinnable War on American Parents? - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics   "Education secretary Miguel Cardona seems to be competing with Attorney General Merrick Garland in having school board critics bullied as “domestic terrorists.” . . .

Noem releases ad touting transgender athlete ban in girls' sports

 The Hill  "South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) released an ad on Wednesday promoting a transgender athlete ban on girls’ sports as the bill makes it way through the state legislature.

" 'In South Dakota, only girls play girls' sports. Why? Because of Governor Kristi Noem’s leadership,” the ad says, which does not use the word “trans” or “transgender.”

“ 'Noem has been protecting girls’ sports for years and never backed down,” the ad continues.

"The ad said that the legislation would give the state “the strongest law in the nation” for protecting girls’ sports.

" 'Noem's steady, conservative leadership doesn't win headlines, it wins results,” the ad says.

"Noem tweeted the ad out on Wednesday, saying in an associated post that it would be airing that night on prime-time news programs across the U.S. 

"On Friday, the GOP-backed Senate State Affairs committee passed Noem’s legislation, which would prohibit female school sports teams from allowing transgender women and girls to play on those teams, The Associated Press reported." . . . 

In South Dakota, only girls play girls’ sports.

Watch my new ad that debuts during prime time news programs across the country tonight about my bill that will give South Dakota the strongest law protecting female sports in the nation! pic.twitter.com/0bREmXz8eh

— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) January 13, 2022