Masks At School

A week ago I wrote that compelling masks at schools was mere kabuki theater.  Perhaps I was wrong, and instead it's really a cult:

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the last place that will be freed from COVID restrictions will be the public schools.

And this mania for pushing both mask wearing in perpetuity, and a full embrace of vaccinations, has become more than just a public health issue. For those in charge of the public schools, it has turned into a religious cult. And you can tell it’s become a cult because they aren’t stopping to consider the harm that they will do to children. They have the power in the public schools, and they will cram down compliance for their mask mandates and pressure kids into getting vaccinated – OR ELSE.

Remember that when Barack Obama talked about people clinging to guns and religion, he was still challenging Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania and was referring to Democrats.  The lefties are still bitter clingers, only now they're clinging to face masks and compulsion.  Gawd, do lefties love compulsion.

Here's a wonderful example from the article linked above:

Which leads to Oakdale High School in California, where school administrators apparently lost their minds when the students staged a protest against wearing masks in school, citing Governor Gavin Newsom’s example while at the 49ers-Rams game last weekend. The kids made it clear to local media that the governor motivated their protest.

The school, for its part, said the kids weren’t facing disciplinary action. But perhaps the staff should.

Update: Confirmed staff attempted to barricade the maskless high schoolers in the gym by putting tables in front of the exits. A staff member also was caught turning down the thermostat to “freeze them out.” Here is one of the photos taken by a student. pic.twitter.com/SckZIG5Tm0

— Reopen California Schools (@ReopenCASchools) February 4, 2022

So, staff turned off the heat on the kids and tried to “barricade” them in the gym. Leaving aside that the “barricade” is completely useless and stupid if they really thought it was going to keep able-bodied teenagers inside the gym, THAT’S A FIRE HAZARD VIOLATION. And the kids called the police, who then turned the heat BACK on! What on earth were these adults, who were supposedly “in charge,” THINKING??? An update from the district now lamely claims that the tables in front of the doors was “unintentional and temporary” and that police, a building inspector, and a fire inspector all showed up to check on the doors. Hmmm, how many angry parents do you think made phone calls? Incidentally, the update from the school does not mention the turning off of the heat by staff. Are they tacitly admitting that this happened, and can offer no excuse for such shitty retaliation toward the kids?

These public schools have a problem, and the problem is that they are now drunk on fear and power. 

St. Fauci won't bless them if they use common sense, not that they seem to have any to use.

The Oceans Will Rise, Or Heat Up, Or Something

Barack told us the oceans would rise--then bought a mansion near the ocean.  Nancy has just purchased a huge mansion near the coast in Florida.  Hypocrisy is a strong suit of lefties--as evidenced by all their private jets whenever there's a global warming conference.

Much of the leftie media screams about global warming, too...

I have often posted that the models used to tie man to climate change were not only bogus but impossible to be correct. There is no way for the model designers to understand all the factors influencing Earth’s climate. A new report proves that the climate models are wrong—it was big news and CNN even reported it. Of course, they chose to report it on Thanksgiving when people aren’t following the news. questioning climate change models.

CNN is still called a news network, although it’s an incorrect description. The network decided that a bombshell report that questions anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change and the models that we are currently using to guide policy and funding should be reported on Thanksgiving Day. When people watch football, the first wave of Christmas specials, or stuffing their faces with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and other food goodies.

On Wednesday, the journal Science Advances published a new study of Arctic water temperature that has determined that the warming has been occurring decades earlier than the “scientific consensus” had believed.

CNN reports that the study found that “the expansion of warm Atlantic Ocean water flowing into the Arctic, a phenomenon known as ‘Atlantification,’ has caused Arctic water temperature in the region studied to increase by around 2 degrees Celsius since 1900.” 

And just about yearly we get stories like this:

More than two dozen cargo vessels are stuck in Russia’s Arctic ice, waiting for ice-breakers to come to their rescue, after an inaccurate forecast from the country’s Met Office.

Maritime traffic in the Northern Sea Route has been on the rise in recent years as rapidly warming winters reduce ice cover, and Russia invests in its Arctic ports in preparation for a further boom.

But this year several segments of the Northern Sea Route froze up about a fortnight earlier than usual, catching many ships unawares.

 When the facts contradict your expectations, believe the facts.

The Scary Movie

I know and work with many people who act and perhaps truly believe that we live in some dystopian science fiction story wherein there are cooties in the air and we all have to wear masks in order to survive.  

I traveled for a month this past summer.  7 states, 30 days, 4600 miles.  Everywhere I went I encountered people going about their normal lives.  A few people here and there wore masks, and they weren't harassed or chastised for doing so.  In some states, it seems like the philosophy is "you do you".  I wore one once in 30 days, when I rode "public transit"--the gondola to the top of Sandia Peak in Albuquerque is considered public transit.  A couple thousand of us gathered at the convention center in Rapid City and almost no one wore masks, and somehow we survived.

This feverish nightmare that the maskers imagine is a strange one indeed.  The virus is politically attuned, which is why Barack Obama's birthday party and Chicago's Lollapalooza and Gavin Newsom's fundraising and massive riots in the streets don't spread the virus but "Trump rallies" and the Sturgis motorcycle rally do.

Or do they?

I've seen no evidence that any rally by President Trump caused an uptick in cootie cases, and here's some data showing that Sturgis didn't, either:

Two weeks after the gathering with more than a half-million attendees concluded, fewer than 200 cases have been attributed to the event.

The Associated Press still breathlessly reported Sunday that “nearly 4,000 people have been newly diagnosed with COVID-19 in the state,” but later noted that “a South Dakota Department of Health spokesman declined to link the Sturgis rally to the rising virus surge, noting only 39 COVID-19 cases directly attributed to the rally.”

 

That such a small number of statewide cases came from Sturgis is a miracle and should have been the headline.

Why do some people choose to live in an apocalyptic nightmare?

Do You Need Even More Evidence That The 'Rona Is Political Now?

Sturgis, no; Obama, si!

Social media users piled on to Dr. Anthony Fauci for what many felt was a double standard when it comes to what type of gatherings he criticizes.

"No comment from St. Fauci on Obama’s soirée last night with a few hundred of his closest friends - or how about Lollapalooza last week in Chicago," one social media user said in reaction to Fauci's comments critical of the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. "Or, I guess it’s SELECTIVE festivities, because the virus knows, and only attacks those who fit the Dems’ narrative."

The remarks came in response to Fauci's comments expressing concern about South Dakota's upcoming Sturgis Motorcycle Rally on Sunday's "Meet the Press," with host Chuck Todd speculating the rally could become a "super spreader" event.

It would be difficult to disagree with this:

"There is a universally available, free vaccine that is 99.999% effective at preventing death," said commentary writer Drew Holden. "The pandemic is over. People need to get back to living."

I don't care about cases anymore.  If people aren't dying from this flu, it's not a problem.

The Media Are Such Obvious Liars

 

Who Bears The Lion's Share Of The Blame For The Lack Of Civility In Government Today?

Remember this quote?

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.”

That was from Hillary Clinton.  Can you imagine if Republicans said something like this?  Or said Democrats ran the car into the ditch and, while they might stand on the side of the road drinking Slurpees, they shouldn't get in the way of the people getting the car out of the ditch?  That was Barack Obama, arguably the worst president in US history--making Jimmy Carter happy, indeed.

Democrats are the ones cheering on rioting and looting in the country.

Democrats are the ones running most of the cities and many of the states that are having rioting and looting problems.

Democrats are the ones that call anyone who doesn't agree with them a "racist" or a "bigot" or a "hater".

Democrats are the ones who had a show-trial impeachment that they knew was baseless.

The Democrats are the ones who engage in conspiracy-theories worthy of Art Bell--Russian collusion, destroying the post office, the president won't leave office if he's not reelected, etc.

The Democrats are the ones who outright lie about the president, as they do when they intentionally misconstrue the president's remarks about the Charlottesville race issue and Confederate statues, and as the NYT did recently when making it appear that an FBI agent was being arrested because he was involved in Russian collusion when in fact he was arrested for faking warrants to further the fake Russian collusion narrative.

I could go on and on, but you get the point.

When you see the depth of their dishonesty and the cravenness of their tactics, maybe it's time to start believing Hillary.  Maybe we can't make peace with the other side.  And since problems and bad news seldom get better over time, maybe we should have the coming civil war now rather than later, so there will be less damage.

My Four Faves From Today's Powerline Week In Pictures

If your browser is like mine and won't display the pictures above, here are the screenshots:

President Trump Is Incompetent

He's an incompetent Nazi.  Moved our embassy to Jerusalem, serenaded a Holocaust survivor, just issued orders using Title VI to protect Jews from discrimination based on religion or national origin at colleges and universities.  There's even a MAGA yarmulke on Amazon.

He's an incompetent Putin puppet.  He's sold weapons to Ukraine and imposed sanctions on Russia.  Remember when President Obama said we couldn't drill our way out of our energy problem?  Drill, baby, drill!  And keep drilling.  Last month the US became a net petroleum exporter for the first time in 75 years.  And we're going to sell LNG to the former Warsaw Pact, undercutting Vlad's state oil company.

He's an incompetent homophobe.  From last night's Instapundit:

WORST. HOMOPHOBIC. PRESIDENT. EVER. Senate confirms openly gay Trump nominee to 9th Circuit. “The Senate confirmed President Trump’s ninth judicial nominee to the liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, elevating Patrick Bumatay, an openly gay Filipino man, to the federal bench over objections from his liberal home-state senators.”
So do Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris hate gays, or Filipinos?
UPDATE: From the comments:

“53-40 party-line vote”
40 Democrats voted against a gay person of color.

Thank God we have Trump to roll over such bigotry in the name of diversity.

He can't even bumble right.  He's got the Mexican government preventing migrants from illegally crossing our border, and he's got more NATO countries living up to their treaty obligations regarding funding the alliance, among other things.

He's such a screw-up, I hope he gets an additional 4 more years in office.  Imagine how much he could screw up then!

Update, 12/14/19:  He's an incompetent white supremacist, too:

If We Judged Govt Programs By Their Actual Outcomes Rather Than Their Wish-For Outcomes....

Why does no one seem to care?  Is it because Common Core was pushed by Saint Barack's administration?  Had any Republican been so instrumental in this, people would (justifiably) be marching with pitchforks:

At the topline, we have seen a story of decline ever since 2013. My fear is that this is not a coincidence. From 2013 onward, the Common Core took firm root in most states and we saw a sea change in school discipline and an apparent explosion of tablets and laptops in the classroom. I’ve grown increasingly concerned that the education reform movement has hurt the students it is trying to help, especially students of color.

Of course, NAEP can’t confirm this hypothesis. It can tell us what is happening but not why.

But I wanted to know more about what was happening, focusing on African American achievement in districts and states from 2013–2019, and what I found, as displayed in table 1, seems well worth ringing an alarm about...

At the state level, the larger sample sizes allowed me to look into African American achievement by gender. I found that, at the national level and in many states, African American males saw greater losses than African American females. Given this alarming pattern—and that, as Fordham’s Erika Sanzi has lamented, boys are often left out of public policy conversations—I decided to display the data in table 2 for African American males from 2013 to 2019...

Folks who claimed that the Common Core, discipline reform, and more tablets and laptops would lead to significant gains for African American students have, at this point, seen their hypotheses fairly well falsified...  (boldface mine--Darren)

The ghastly data on African American achievement should have raised major alarm bells. But in a movement ostensibly dedicated to racial equity, it seems to have gone mostly unnoticed.

How Much Has Earth's Temperature Warmed Since 2005?

According to NOAA, not much:

When American climate alarmists claim to have witnessed the effects of global warming, they must be referring to a time beyond 14 years ago. That is because there has been no warming in the United States since at least 2005, according to updated data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)...

The USCRN (U.S. Climate Reference Network) has eliminated the need to rely on, and adjust the data from, outdated temperature stations. Strikingly, as shown in the graph below, USCRN temperature stations show no warming since 2005 when the network went online. If anything, U.S. temperatures are now slightly cooler than they were 14 years ago...

There is also good reason to believe U.S. temperatures have not warmed at all since the 1930s. Raw temperature readings at the preexisting stations indicate temperatures are the same now as 80 years ago. All of the asserted U.S. warming since 1930 is the product of the controversial adjustments made to the raw data. Skeptics point out that as the American population has grown, so has the artificial warming signal generated by growing cities, more asphalt, more automobiles, and more machinery. 

If Barack Obama really thought the oceans were going to rise dramatically, would he have bought a house on Martha's Vineyard?  (Hint:  Martha's Vineyard is a low-lying island.)
 

UC's New McCarthyism

This type of corruption is expected when you recall that President Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, is president of the University of California:

California had its own version of McCarthyism, as it came to be known. The Legislature created a Committee on Un-American Activities and in 1950 enacted the Levering Act, requiring all state employees to sign “loyalty oaths.”

It was specifically aimed at the University of California’s faculty, and 31 tenured professors were fired for refusing to sign it.

The state was unconstitutionally imposing “a political test for employment,” as the California State Federation of Teachers said at the time. And after much legal wrangling, the state Supreme Court voted 6-1 in 1967 to declare the Levering Act unconstitutional.

Although UC’s Board of Regents officially declares that “No political test shall ever be considered in the appointment and promotion of any faculty member or employee,” a new UC policy seems to be doing exactly that.

As part of its “commitment to diversity and excellence,” UC’s administrators are telling recruiters for faculty positions, as one directive puts it, to take “pro-active steps to seek out candidates committed to diversity, equity and inclusion.”

To enforce that dictum, UC also requires applicants for new faculty employment and promotions to submit “diversity statements” that will be scored “with rubrics provided by Academic Affairs and require applicants to achieve a scoring cutoff to be considered.”

The academic affairs department at UC-Davis says that diversity statements from tenure-track faculty applicants should have “an accomplished track record…of teaching, research or service activities addressing the needs of African-American, Latino, Chicano, Hispanic and Native American students or communities.” Their statements must “indicate awareness” of those communities and “the negative consequences of underutilization” and “provide a clearly articulated vision” of how their work at UC-Davis would advance diversity policies...

While Flier (former head of the Harvard Medical School) sees the new policy as “far from the loyalty oaths deployed at the University of California during the McCarthy era,” he adds: “It’s not unreasonable to be concerned that politically influenced attestations might begin to re-emerge in the current hyperpartisan political environment, either in response to politically driven demands for faculty to support populist or nationalist ideas, or from within the increasingly polarized academy itself. Since progressive/left identifications are dominant in the academy, especially in the humanities and social sciences (as well as in administration), politically influenced litmus tests could easily arise in that sphere.” 

I have no doubt that lefties will leftsplain :-) why the former oaths were bad but the new oaths are good.

Happy 4th of July

Since the so-called Betsy Ross flag is now a sign of...something bad, I'll embrace it here just to trigger a couple lefties.

Here's Obama's inaugural:

Here's a shirt I got a couple years ago:

And here's a picture from Trafalgar Square in London.  Trafalgar freakin' Square:

"Present to the people of Great Britain and Ireland by the Commonwealth of Virginia 1921".

Have a happy 4th of July.

Obama-Era School Discipline Guidelines Made Things Worse

Anyone with at least half a brain could figure out that if you relax disciplinary standards in schools, students will behave worse.  Why wouldn't they?  If you knew you weren't going to get speeding tickets anymore, would you watch your speed at all?

This paper gives us specifics:

Abstract

On March 8, 2010, one year into the Obama Administration, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a passionate speech in which he asserted (correctly) that African-American students are the subjects of school discipline at higher rates than white students. Although he did not mention it, it is also true that white students are the subjects of school discipline at higher rates than Asian American students and that male students are disciplined at higher rates than female students.

In response to the racial disparity he identified, Duncan promised that the Department of Education would be stepping up its enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the years that followed, the Department of Education made good on that promise by opening numerous investigations based on statistical disparities. On January 18, 2014, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice jointly issued a “Dear Colleague Letter” on school discipline in which they asserted that the law prohibits not only actual discrimination in discipline on the basis of race, but also what they called “unjustified” disparate impact.

In Part I of this article, we point out that there are two sides to the “disparate impact” coin. The Department of Education has focused only upon the fact that, as a group, African-American students are suspended and expelled more often than other students. By failing to consider the other side of the coin — that African-American students may be disproportionately victimized by disorderly classrooms — its policy threatens to do more harm than good even for the group Secretary Duncan was trying to help. In Part II, we discuss the Department of Education’s enforcement policy toward school discipline in greater detail, its over-reliance on racial disparate impact, and how that over-reliance pushes some schools to violate Title VI’s ban on race discrimination rather than honor it. In Part III, we elaborate on why school discipline is important and present evidence that the Department of Education’s policy has contributed to the problem of disorderly classrooms, especially in schools with high minority student enrollment. In Part IV, we discuss how aggregate racial disparities in discipline do not in themselves show the discrimination against African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians that some proponents of the Department of Education’s policy claim. Rather, the evidence shows that they are the result of differences in behavior. In Part V, we explain why the Department of Education’s disparate impact policy is not just wrong-headed, but also unauthorized by law.

A wise man once said that the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.  Obama, Holder, and Duncan really screwed things up by trying to "fix" a problem that they had misinterpreted.

Unilateral Presidential Actions

Remember the pen and the phone?  Remember when President Obama changed the Obamacare law in contravention of what the Congress passed?  Liberals cheered when Democratic presidents went rogue, but now that a (Republican) president wants to secure the border, that's a bad thing?  Perhaps I can be forgiven for believing that their goals are somewhat partisan:

Whatever your position is on President Trump's declaration of a national emergency in order get the wall on the southern border built, one thing is clear: Democrats denouncing this decision are absolute hypocrites.

Barack Obama started his presidency with his party controlling both houses of Congress. The moment the GOP took back the House, Obama decided he was unwilling to work on compromise legislation to achieve his agenda, and instead repeatedly threatened to enact his agenda unilaterally. “We’re not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help they need. I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” he said in January 2014. And he followed through on that threat, even on issues such as immigration. Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) programs via executive action, essentially giving amnesty to illegal immigrants without the consent of Congress.

Back then, Democrats in Congress loved it when Obama abused his power to alter immigration law without their consent. In May 2014, Sen. Chuck Schumer (R-N.Y.) warned Republicans in Congress that “if they don’t pass immigration reform... the president will have no choice but to act on his own.”

You don't like that a national emergency has been invoked?  There are currently 31 in effect, including some from the last president saying we're not going to be friends with some of the people who are destabilizing Yemen.  Which is more of a national emergency, the stability of Yemen or our own border?

Here is a list from ABC News of the 31 national emergency orders currently in effect.

I Was Ahead Of The Curve

I thought he'd be a lousy president, and I was right.  Now the libs are finally catching on:

A new Vanity Fair analysis refers to former president Barack Obama as a “visionary” but notes that up-and-coming Democrats are starting to frown upon his achievements...In a relatively short period, President Trump has almost singlehandedly dismantled Obama’s legacy...Trump has pulled America out of the Paris Accord, reversed pro-illegal immigration executive orders, rescinded many government regulations, repealed the Obamacare individual mandate, and of course, canceled the Iran nuclear agreement.

Worse than policy issues, younger faces of the Democrat party have found Obama’s vision devastating to their futures in politics.

He was elected solely because of his skin color, and the results show that was a less-than-stellar basis.

When The President Lies

The media care about presidential lies only when the president has an (R) after his name:
MSM Never Questioned Airing An Obama Speech Despite These 1063 Examples Of His Lies, Mendacity, Etc.
Sometimes they even create so-called lies.  Go figure.

Failing The Test of Leadership

There are lots of practical tidbits that real leaders know:

Take more than your fair share of the blame, and less than your fair share of the credit.

Don't ask subordinates to do what you're not willing to do.

Praise in public, rebuke in private.

Rider University (huh?  wha?  who?), though, failed at another of those rules, which is don't give people a choice if you won't accept the outcome:

New Jersey's Rider University sent a survey to students asking them which restaurants they would like to see on campus, but when it became clear Chick-fil-A was the top pick, the school told students the popular fast-food chain would not be brought to campus.

Campus Reform first reported on the survey that was sent to students during the spring semester.

After the results were compiled, the school sent an email to students on November 1, saying Chick-fila-A'(sic) "corporate values have not sufficiently progressed enough to align with those of Rider."

This goes back to the comment of Chick-Fil-A's CEO a few years ago, who shared that his position on gay marriage was the same as Barack Obama's was when he was inaugurated.

Has Chick-Fil-A as a corporation ever done anything against gay people, individually or as a group?  Not that I'm aware of.  But disagreeing with a person's personal view is now considered sufficient reason to keep a business off a university campus, despite the fact that the students want that business there.

It doesn't get clearer than this:

"So you practice inclusiveness by excluding Chick-fil-A? How does that work?" one (social media) user said.

Consistency is not a strong suit of the left.

How Are Kids Doing Under Common Core

Are all our students Stanford-bound now?

It’s been about nine years since the Obama administration lured states into adopting Common Core sight unseen, with promises it would improve student achievement. Like President Obama’s other big promises — “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” — this one’s been proven a scam.

“If you set and enforce rigorous and challenging standards and assessments; if you put outstanding teachers at the front of the classroom; if you turn around failing schools — your state can win a Race to the Top grant that will not only help students outcompete workers around the world, but let them fulfill their God-given potential,” President Obama said in July 2009.

He went on to state his faith that Common Core — at that point unwritten — would “not only make America’s entire education system the envy of the world, but we will launch a Race to the Top that will prepare every child, everywhere in America, for the challenges of the 21st century.” Race to the Top was a $4 billion money pot inside the 2009 stimulus that helped bribe states into Common Core.

So here we are, nine years later. Common Core has been officially rolled out into U.S. public and even many private schools for at least three to five years now. Are American children increasingly prepared for the “the challenges of the 21st century”? We’re actually seeing the opposite. They’re increasingly less prepared. And there’s mounting evidence that Common Core deserves some of the blame.

I'm glad the author said "some of the blame", as I've previously chronicled too many examples of forces outside of schools having a negative impact on learning.

Still, we teachers own a large part of this blame.  Saint Barack wanted Common Core, so large swaths of teachers and their unions jumped on that bandwagon.  Like so many other mistakes, we continue to try to find ways to make it work rather than admitting failure and trying something more rational.

I won't speak to the English standards, but the California math standards that were replaced by Common Core were more clear, more understandable, and more rigorous than the Common Core math standards, and California students did better under those old standards.  And just so you know, they were imposed by a Democratic governor.

It's The Republicans Who Have Moved So Far Right? Uh, No.

Since the mid-90s, the plank of the Republican party has moved towards the center--think gay marriage, for instance--and the Democrats have moved wildly left.  Whenever people think the Republicans have moved to the right, I ask them, "on what issue?"  I can show you an issue where the Democrats have certainly moved to the far left in the past 20 years or so; heck, maybe they've moved crazy left in the past dozen years or so:

President Bill Clinton, 1995


Senator Barack Obama, 2005


I've pointed this out earlier this year, here.  That link includes yet another video, of President Obama, talking about illegal immigration.

What was eminently reasonable just a few years ago, and had been reasonable since the founding of the republic, is now considered wrong/racist/evil/stupid/etc.  It's not Republicans who have changed position here.

Do They Think We Don't Remember?

From CNN's editor-at-large:  Donald Trump's me, me, me, me press conference

Odd, I can't seem to find Cillizza's complaints about all of President Obama's I-I-I speeches. But I'm told media bias is a myth.