Is Liberal Racism a Horse of a Different Color?

Bigotry is bigotry, whether systemic, as at Harvard, or idiosyncratic, like Sarah Jeong’s Twitter feed.

Be honest. Are you really surprised that the New York Times has stood by its decision to hire Sarah Jeong as an editorial board member even after it was revealed she spent years on social media making openly racist and sexist remarks about white men? You may be outraged, sure. But surprised?

To paraphrase a well-known political figure, Ms. Jeong could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot a white person without losing the support of liberals. It’s a safe bet she was tapped by the Times because of these racial prejudices, not despite them. Editorial board members are hired to help formulate and express the official position of a newspaper. Ms. Jeong is being hired to speak for the Times, and they like where she’s coming from.

The Grey Lady attacks President Trump as a racist and sexist on a near-daily basis, and columnists like Charles Blow write about little else. So is it hypocritical for the paper to hire and defend a new editorial board member who has made no secret of her own biases? Of course it is, but that’s considered beside the point by people who share Ms. Jeong’s worldview.

The liberals who control most major media outlets specialize in applying different standards to different groups. Like the Times, Twitter had no problem with Ms. Jeong’s repugnant observations. Scores of tweets that included offensive phrases—“#cancelwhitepeople”; “are White people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun?”; “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along”—didn’t faze Jack Dorsey’s content monitors. But when conservative activist Candace Owens decided last weekend to reproduce Ms. Jeong’s posts and replace “white” with “black” or “Jewish,” Twitter temporarily suspended her account. Following a backlash, Twitter restored the account and claimed that “we made an error.”

Of course, the Times can hire whomever it pleases. But if it’s going to give the likes of Ms. Jeong a pass while lecturing us about growing intolerance on the political right, how seriously should readers take the paper’s nonstop Trump-is-a-bigot coverage? The president’s attacks on the media are often misguided and overstated—his daughter Ivanka is right; we’re not the enemy of the people—but major news outlets are doing plenty to erode public confidence in the news without any help from Mr. Trump.

Welcome to another example of the left’s inconsistency on race. If the goal is a postracial America, why does racial identity continue to be liberalism’s overriding obsession? Why is racism viewed as something to redirect rather than end outright? If you’re situated on the progressive left, racist views are OK to harbor so long as they’re targeted at the right groups for the proper reasons?

At Harvard, Asian students are currently out of favor among administrators for the sin of taking up too many slots in the freshman class. America’s most prestigious university, a bastion of liberal thinking, is being sued by Asian students for discrimination. Harvard wants a certain racial balance on campus, and Asians are getting in the way by academically outperforming applicants from other groups. The nerve.

Harvard can no longer credibly deny that it’s engaging in systematic racial discrimination. Internal documents that the school has been forced to disclose to fight the litigation suggest that Harvard is doing what has long been rumored. Nonetheless, school officials justify these racially biased practices. They insist, like Ms. Jeong and her defenders, that such bigotry is in the service of a noble cause. Unlike you or me, Harvard knows how to discriminate the “right” way.

Prior to World War II, and long before Harvard and other Ivy League schools had an “Asian problem,” the concern was too many Jews on the quad. The parallels are instructive. “Jewish students outperformed their Gentile classmates by a considerable margin,” writes Jerome Karabel in his 2005 book, “The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.”

Then as now, the schools came up with ways to overcome that reality by de-emphasizing objective admissions criteria. Jews were less likely to participate in athletics or belong to social clubs other than Jewish fraternities, both of which were deemed “character” flaws for the purpose of bringing the “Jewish invasion” under control. These days, Asian applicants to Harvard receive consistently low “personal” ratings, which are then used to undercut their academic achievements under Harvard’s “holistic” assessment of their worthiness.

So long as the goal is not to level the playing field but to tilt it in a different direction, expect history to continue repeating itself.

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Economic Boom: Media Rewrite History To Credit Obama Instead Of Trump

Growth: The stronger the economy gets under President Trump, the more desperate his critics are to hand credit over to Obama. Even if that entails changing the past.

A recent New York Times story says it all: "An Economic Upturn Begun Under Obama Is Now Trump's To Tout."

The article begins by admitting that "by nearly every standard measure, the American economy is doing well," then spends the next 1,400 words arguing that the current good times have nothing to do with Trump's economic agenda.

The economy, reporter Patricia Cohen declares, "is following the upward trajectory begun under President Barack Obama."

Upward trajectory?

We seem to recall that the economy was stagnating in 2016 after the weakest recovery from a recession since the Great Depression.

In fact, The New York Times itself described Obama's economy this way in August 2016: "For three quarters in a row, the growth rate of the economy has hovered around a mere 1%. In the last quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016, the economy expanded at feeble annual rates of 0.9% and 0.8%, respectively. The initial reading for the second quarter of this year, released on Friday, was a disappointing 1.2%."

GDP growth decelerated in each of the last three quarters of 2016.

And on January 27, 2017, after the government reported that GDP growth for all 2016 was a mere 1.6% — the weakest in five years — the Times announced that "President Trump's target for economic growth just got a little more distant."

That same month, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office forecast growth this year would be just 1.9%.

There were other signs of stagnation as well. Stocks had flatlined in 2016, with major indexes down slightly. Real median household income dropped that year, according to Sentier Research.

Growth had been so worrisomely slow throughout Obama's two terms in office that journalists started warning about "secular stagnation." They said the country was in a period of long, sustained, slow growth resulting from slow population and productivity growth.

In August 2016, the Times declared that "the underlying reality of low growth will haunt whoever wins the White House."

Predictions of Slow Growth

The next month, CBS News reported that "with U.S. economic growth stuck in low gear for several years, it's leading many economists to worry that the country has entered a prolonged period where any expansion will be weaker than it has been in the past."

In short, there was no upward trajectory to the economy on anyone's radar when Trump took office.

Now that the economy is outperforming everyone's expectations, Trump's critics want to pretend that the current boom was already baked in the cake.

We are the first to admit that the impact of federal policies take time to show up in the economy. But the fact is that optimism surged across the board as soon as pro-growth Trump won the election over stay-the-stagnant-course Hillary Clinton.

Now, after Trump's deregulation and tax cuts are starting to take effect, we're seeing still more signs of stronger growth.

Polls show that the public gives Trump credit for what's going on today. They, not the mainstream press, have it right.

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Pocahontas goofs again

It isn’t particularly difficult to see the logic behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s decision to call America’s justice system “racist” from “front to back” last week

That sort of stuff plays well among the kind of person who would come out and vote in the 2020 Democrat primaries — and, given that most Americans outside of Taxachusetts know Warren best for her Pocahontas shenanigans and that the liberal wing of her party is already lining up again behind Bernie “It’s Naptime in America Again” Sanders, she needs to shake the tree somehow.

Oh, and two of her top rivals for the nomination — California Sen. Kamala Harris and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick — both happen to a) have been involved in the criminal justice system and b) be African-American. Quelle surprise!

While one understands her motivation, one is also somewhat confused about which tree she decided to shake. Harris and Patrick — not to mention every other person involved in the law enforcement system — could point to the comment as a sign that this is someone who’s dangerously irresponsible. And, in fact, that pointing has already begun.

Two police chiefs in the state of Massachusetts have publicly come out against Warren in tersely worded statements released since the senator made the remarks, with one saying that it “spreads false and damaging information about our members” and the other saying Warren “slapped” every officer “in the face.”

“I now cannot trust her words are real,” Yarmouth police Chief Frank G. Frederickson told the Boston Herald. “It appears she is telling the audience in front of her what she thinks they want to hear.”

While that last part isn’t necessarily a revelation about any politician, particularly not Warren, consider the fact that Frederickson’s department recently experienced the loss of Sgt. Sean Gannon, an officer killed while serving a warrant on a career criminal, according to MassLive.

Frederickson said Warren had “diminished the sincerity of her condolence efforts” and that she had “slapped in the face” law enforcement officers by her remarks.

Losing Dudley police Chief Steven J. Wojnar — who’s also president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association — was probably a bigger problem for Warren.

“As a police chief in your home state of Massachusetts, as well as the statewide association representative, I am extremely troubled by this statement,” Wojnar wrote in an open letter to Warren, according to MassLive.

“Labeling the entire criminal justice profession as ‘racist’ spreads false and damaging information about our members. We feel we do a very good job in Massachusetts of producing professional and community-oriented police officers.

“These men and women, from a variety of backgrounds, provide dedicated service to their respective communities under difficult and highly scrutinized circumstances each day,” the statement continued. “When our elected officials make generalized and inflammatory statements about our entire profession, without any information to back their position, it creates further hostility toward our officers and can damage the positive relationships with our residents that we have worked long and hard to establish.”

In a response to Frederickson, Warren tried to do what’s so often euphemistically referred to as “clarifying” her remarks.

“I appreciate Chief Frederickson’s thoughtful comments. The men and women in law enforcement work in incredibly dangerous situations,” Warren said.

“We honor those in uniform who put their lives on the line every day and those who have been killed in the line of duty to keep the rest of us safe. I spoke about an entire system — not individuals — and will continue to work on reforms to make the criminal justice system fairer.”

Leaving aside the fact that a system that was so racist would necessarily require individuals who were themselves racists, she clearly wasn’t speaking about just a “system.” She was condemning a very basic part of the American government — and by extension, the individuals it’s made up of.  In what universe would any right-thinking person interpret it this way?

If this helps Warren win the nomination, it would gladden my heart if only because it’s going to make all that effort worthless. After she clears a field of intractably liberal candidates by appealing to intractably liberal voters, she would suddenly have to confront the rest of America — an America that’s insulted by the notion that every facet of our criminal justice system is a tool of white supremacy.

There’s no way Warren is going to be able to back away from this one, and she’s going to have to find some way to own it that doesn’t derail her candidacy before it begins. Alea iacta est, as Caesar might have put it. The whole “Pocahontas” bit may have been worth a chuckle, but this morsel of uniquely Warrenian self-sabotage is going to stick with her a lot longer than her supporters probably think.

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Van Jones Claims There’s No Difference Between Hateful Nazi Rhetoric And Conservative Media

Van Jones has got a very impressive deep voice.  Sadly, it is driven by a pea-sized brain

CNN host Van Jones compared Fox News host Laura Ingraham to a neo-Nazi on his show Saturday and said they were preaching the same message of hate.

Jones played a clip of one of his CNN colleagues interviewing a white nationalist in Pennsylvania and then played a clip of Ingraham discussing demographic changes in America. (RELATED: CNN’s Van Jones Supports Holding Attorney General Jeff Sessions In Contempt)

“This guy actually openly wears swastikas on his shirt and he says America is his country because he’s white,” Jones said before running the clip. “To be fair, 12 of the guy’s neighbors came out immediately and told [the CNN correspondent] they don’t agree with this guy. He doesn’t represent them and their community and they deserve a round of applause for sticking up for what’s right in this country.”

Right after praising the man’s neighbors for doing the right thing, Jones attacked Ingraham and fed the fire of division by comparing her message to that of hateful Nazis.

“I appreciate them for doing that. But here’s the thing that bothers me the most. Those same themes that were once considered so extreme are now becoming mainstream, at least in conservative media,” he continued. “Listen to Laura Ingraham on Fox News addressing millions of your fellow citizens and neighbors on our air.”

“Now, I see zero difference between what Laura Ingraham is saying on mainstream cable and what the Nazi was just saying in front of his house,” Jones concluded. “Literally, it’s the same message and it is wrong. But there is some good news in America. There are millions of people who refuse to accept this notion that America should be whites only or dominated by one race forever.”

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Justice for Americans at the UN

The Trump administration is trying to secure more jobs for American citizens in the United Nations bureaucracy, as a recent State Department report finds woeful underrepresentation even though the United States contributes more to the world body than any other government.

The U.S. funds almost one-quarter of key U.N. agencies, and their staffs play a key role in implementing international policy on health, aviation, labor, and security. However, the U.N. hasn’t made a good faith effort to hire Americans under existing rules, according to a State Department report obtained by The Daily Signal.

The report, sent July 3 to members of Congress, asserts that five U.N. agencies aren’t abiding by their own rules on providing geographic representation among employees, which would require more Americans. As of last year, 739 American citizens worked in these five agencies among a total of 7,126 employees, according to the State Department.

With the advent of the Trump administration, the State Department began moving to reverse the long-running trend, which Congress first tried to deal with through legislation in 1991.

That legislation required the State Department to report to Congress on whether international organizations are making “good faith steps to increase the staffing of United States citizens and has met its geographic distribution formula.”

While the problem isn’t new, the Trump administration is taking a bigger interest in it than previous administrations, said Brett Schaefer, a senior research fellow for international regulatory affairs at The Heritage Foundation who writes often about the U.N.

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