A pity party for pompous bureaucrats ...

As a parade of self-centered, self-important, pompous asses from the State Department trooped forward in the impeachment hearings, I was struck by one thing. 

It was all about their hurt feelings.

Not that Trump did anything illegal, but he ignored them.  One after another testified that they were upset – I believe the most often used word was “disturbed” – that he was circumventing them. They were the experts. They, not him, were in charge of policy on Ukraine. 

One arrogant, puffed up witness – Vindman – showed up in his military dress uniform to prove his gravitas, even though he had to concede under questioning he normally wore a suit to work. When one Republican addressed him as Mr. Vindman, he quickly demanded that he properly be addressed as Lt. Col. Vindman because he was in fact in uniform that day.

Vindman had earlier stated in written remarks that he was essentially THE most important person on Ukraine policy. Everything concerning Ukraine had to go through him, according to his testimony.  Naturally then he was deeply disturbed to be left out of Trump’s call with Zelensky. After reading the transcript he scurried off to report his feelings to a variety of people, including, it seems, the mysterious whistleblower who, like Vindman didn’t hear the call firsthand.

In short, Vindman was probably the original leaker to the whistleblower. Some of his peers and bosses long suspected he was the source of a variety of leaks to the media since Trump took office. Which may explain why he was also intentionally left out of other meetings between Trump’s people and Ukrainian officials.  

In one instance he was told he wasn’t on the approved list of attendees. To Vindman this was unacceptable because he was so important. Leaving him out of the loop was clearly a sign to him that Trump and Trump’s people were doing something they were trying to hide. Otherwise, they would have included him on everything. 

He wasn’t alone in feeling left out. Rudely tossed aside.  And bitter.          

Just about every witness said Trump’s actions threatened long-standing State Department protocols and processes.  What was he thinking? He should have followed their rules. Instead he set up “irregular” back channels with Ukraine officials, bypassing proper procedures. He ignored them all.  Career diplomats felt blindsided, embarrassed, and their authority undercut.   

How dare he make decisions without involving these career State Department employees.  How dare he ignore their carefully crafted talking points. How dare he have conversations with foreign leaders without letting them listen in.  How dare he keep them out of the loop. 

More importantly, how dare he remove one of their own – Voinovich – so cruelly and heartlessly; that was just mean-spirited and hurtful to her.  Democrats on the panel constantly picked at that scab when questioning her and the other State Department witnesses. How did it make her feel?  How did it make them feel?  How did others in the State Department feel?

The consensus: they all felt awful about it.  Especially her.  Surprised?   

Democrats were clearly hoping she would break down and cry for a Blasey-Ford made-for-TV moment; they kept pushing and pushing. They put up disparaging e-mails and statements made by Giuliani and others about her, including what Trump said in his call to Zelensky.  Adam Schiff even interrupted her questioning to read a new mean tweet about her from Trump and ask Voinovich how she felt about Trump criticizing her and trying to intimidate her with false claims.

Throughout this circus, time and again Voinovich and her State Department pals said Trump had no just cause to fire her. That recalling her was the result of a smear campaign of false charges by Giuliani and other Trump allies.  That taking away her ambassadorship so abruptly had a chilling effect on the entire State Department; if Trump could take her out for no reason, no one was safe.  Regardless of how many years they had served.  No matter what and how many awards they’d won.  No matter how well thought of and respected by their peers.     

You could just see what they were all thinking: Who the hell does Trump think he is? 

Well, he is the elected President of the United States. He has sole authority via the Constitution to set foreign policy. He can also remove and replace any ambassador at any time, for no reason at all – that, too, is in the Constitution. 

Ask Obama.  He forced the resignation of every Bush-era ambassador as soon as he took office so he could put in his own people. Did anyone then bitch and whine? Nope. 

So while a President has the Constitutional authority to do whatever he wants on foreign policy and with ambassadors – including asking foreign leaders to investigate potential corruption involving U.S. citizens, there’s no authority granted on any of this to the State Department.

In fact, there’s no mention of a State Department at all in the Constitution. 

What I saw in the last two weeks of impeachment hearings was the equivalent of 70s-era encounter group where everyone shared their feelings, usually with bad results. In this case it was a wall-to-wall bureaucrat bitch fest.   

Or, maybe it was like the Airing of Grievances per Festivus on Seinfeld.  At least everyone knew Festivus was clearly a joke; Democrats and the media never saw how much of a joke this was.

Even after not a single witness could come up with anything Trump had done that was illegal.  Not a single witness could say they heard Trump himself say he was withholding aid to Ukraine until they investigated the Bidens or the 2016 election.  Every witness conceded Trump had the absolute right to determine foreign policy. And to remove and replace ambassadors at will.    

All they had was hurt feelings.  Boo hoo.   

I did have one other takeaway from the hearings.

If anyone ever doubted there is an entrenched bureaucracy in DC that feels they, not elected officials, are really in charge, the two weeks of impeachment hearings we just endured should set that to rest once and for all.  Everyone saw that entrenched bureaucracy in action.

Trump got elected in large part because of his promise to drain the swamp and return power to the people from unelected bureaucrats. That’s why career bureaucrats hate Trump.  He threatens their very existence. Their hold on power.  Their belief they can get away with anything they like. 

And their blatant indifference to the will of the people who pay their salaries.   

If Trump gets re-elected, he needs to follow through on his original pledge. 

With a vengeance. The public will thank him.  I know I will. 

Why American students are getting dumber ...

And increasingly obnoxious. 

It’s not entirely their fault.  It’s part their parents’ fault, too. 

Yet most of the blame falls on our politicians and especially our K-12 public education system that went off the rails starting about 40 years ago and continues to devolve.  Now we’re all suffering from the results and, if left unchecked, we will continue to suffer for years to come.  

The downward slide started with the idea that the most important thing was to make every student feel good about themselves.  It became more about boosting self-esteem than learning.

That’s how we got social promotion in our schools. That’s how we got the dumbing down of the general curricula. That’s how we got rampant grade inflation. 

Students no longer advanced to the next grade solely because of academic performance, but because holding them back would hurt their self-esteem.

For that reason, teachers and school administrators became reluctant to hold failing students back a year, even though repeating a grade was often in the best interest of a failing student. That’s because the next grade up has always built on mastery of content from the previous grade. When that doesn’t happen, students can fall further and further behind and never catch up. 

But something else happened as well.  The role of teachers – or at least how they perceived their relationship with their students – changed dramatically.      

Teachers no longer wanted to be authority figures in the classroom; they wanted to become “friends” with their students.  Pals.  Buddies. Some didn’t want to be Mr., Mrs., or Miss so-and-so; they wanted to be on a first-name basis, especially with students over 16.  At the very least, they wanted students to like them personally, rather than just respect or fear them.

Before you think that never happened, think again. In the late-1960s it had already started.  I remember one young English teacher who showed up in my home room when I was a senior in high school to ask me why I didn’t seem to like her.  I was stunned; I’d never had a teacher do that before. It wasn’t that I was doing poorly in her class or causing trouble – I made straight As in her class – and she was an okay teacher, it was simply she worried I didn’t like her.

From that day forward, I had zero respect for her. 

When teachers prize your friendship and self-esteem, and the happiness of your parents, over your performance in the classroom, that’s corrosive to the process of teaching and objectively measuring what students have learned.  Poor test scores and bad grades hurt your friends’ feelings, and often meant confrontations with angry parents. It was far easier to let kids slide and that’s what a lot of teachers did, with the blessing of administrators.   

This led to a whole generation of students who graduated from high school – if they didn’t drop out first – with a diploma that meant nothing except attendance.  Too many were functionally illiterate: they couldn’t read at their grade level; they couldn’t do basic math. 

Despite this, some of them graduated with “honors.”

But they felt good about themselves. That’s all that mattered.  They were happy.  Their parents were happy. Teachers were happy because they moved students through and out of the system.  Big-city mayors touted their success in improving graduation rates in their schools, which, while still dismal in most cases, were artificially better than before.  Marginally. 

Everybody got a trophy – in this case a diploma.      

No one seemed to care the K-12 public education industry was pushing out too many students ill-equipped to fill out a basic job application.

Making everybody feel good about themselves was what public education was all about anyway, right?  That’s what the teachers’ unions espoused.  That’s also what Education majors in college at that time were being taught.  Students would learn better – and more – if you only used positive reinforcement and compassion in the classroom. It was bad to be judgmental.

You’re probably think that no way did colleges teach future teachers that.  Aren’t teachers the best and brightest among us – otherwise they wouldn’t be teachers, right?

Few will ever admit this – teachers especially – but a lot of Education majors haven’t been that challenged on their way to becoming K-12 teachers. There are exceptions, of course, like those that earned degrees in Math or Science or another subject before they became teachers. But many got more generic Education degrees from probably the easiest programs in their college or university.  I know that was the case when I was in college.  I suspect that never changed. 

In my university, even in the 1970s, it was almost impossible to fail Education courses; about the only way you could fail was not show up to any classes and not take any exams.  If you failed an exam you could take it over and over until you passed.

That happened nowhere else in the university. 

Predictably, then, when my state instituted more rigorous mandatory testing of teachers not all that long ago, an appalling number failed. This wasn’t something new. For four straight years teacher test scores declined.  Some teachers lamented that they had to retake the test as many as six times before they ultimately passed.  Yet instead of trying to bring up their scores by better mastering their subjects, they blamed the test itself as being “too hard” and went to court.

I remind you folks, these are the same people teaching your children and grandchildren. The same ones on whose watch American student test scores continue to fall compared to other nations.  These are the people who will be instructing the next generations, too.  The overall message: if at first you don’t succeed, demand a re-do until you do; if you still fail, sue to lower the standards. 

Remember this the next time you hear that today’s teachers are woefully underpaid and overworked.  If we only spent more on teachers and reduced class sizes we’d get better results. 

Well, we’ve done that and scores continue to decline. 

But there were clear signs this wasn’t working out as planned. Not all students were learning better and more.  In fact, objective standardized test score averages kept declining. And still are.  As early as the 1970s more and more colleges and universities found the need to provide remedial reading and math courses for incoming freshmen. Think about that.

What was the response from politicians and the teachers’ unions? 

Smaller class sizes.  More classroom aides.  Better pay for teachers.  Better training for teachers.  Improved facilities.  More creative teaching techniques. Always the same stuff. 

Nothing about addressing the real reason for declining test scores: teachers weren’t doing their job to actually educate the kids and apply real standards to determine what the kids learned.  Just as important, many parents were opposed to any objective measurement of how well their Sue or Johnny were doing; they either didn’t want to know or were afraid of the results. 

Probably because they suspected what they’d learn. The myth would be destroyed. 

When some states tried to implement standardized testing of all students to decide whether they could move to the next grade or graduate the outrage from a lot of parents was off the charts. There were lawsuits, accusations of racism, and organized protests to halt the testing.          

The entire premise of the American experiment and the rights and freedoms we enjoy is based on an informed and educated electorate.  That’s why K-12 public education here is free.  To everyone.  Regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion or whatever.

But if you can’t objectively measure if our K-12 education system is doing what it’s supposed to, and we continue to lower the bar to make even the most illiterate students feel good about themselves, we can expect our population to get dumber and dumber. 

Worse, they’ll vote.  

Bombshell allegations of pedophlia involving Adam Schiff ...

Sources allege there’s evidence that Adam Schiff is a pedophile.

Schiff angrily denied the allegations saying “it’s all been blown out of proportion. I did nothing wrong. What I did was perfect. It’s a hit job.”

My sources claim they heard from a friend who claimed inside knowledge they’d gotten from someone who had information from someone close to Schiff that Adam Schiff liked little boys.

As damning proof, there’s a tape of Schiff acting as Santa at a Christmas party asking a young boy what he’d like for Christmas. Schiff didn’t have to say it, but the boy understood that Santa wouldn’t bring him anything unless the boy did what “Santa” wanted.   

It’s clear from the context what Schiff was after – he was willing to provide something to that boy if the boy would do something for him.  Other people in the room were stunned that Schiff would blatantly pressure the child this way, threatening him with withholding gifts if the boy didn’t do exactly what Schiff wanted.  He used his position of power – as Santa – to intimidate the boy. 

He also asked the boy to cooperate fully with Santa’s associate – the Elf on the Shelf – already in the boy’s house. He asked the boy to “do us a favor” and look into some disturbing rumors he’d heard about someone misbehaving in the boy’s house. 

Everybody knew what they heard. Everyone knew what Schiff was after.  Well, only a couple of people actually heard what Schiff had said. But others later learned second and third hand and were appalled. One sent a letter anonymously to the boy’s parents about their concerns. 

The parents found the tape and played it.  They listened to it.  Schiff listened to it.  Nobody could find anything wrong on the tape.  The boy also listened to it; even the boy said he didn’t hear anything wrong, nor did he ever feel pressured. 

But an anonymous source – who, it turned out, wasn’t even there when the whole thing originally occurred – decided to file a formal complaint with the neighborhood watch association. Others who hadn’t witnessed the original event, but didn’t like Schiff as a neighbor, were convinced there was credible evidence Schiff was a sexual predator and filed a complaint with local police.

The local police responded by searching Schiff’s house, seizing his computer, confiscating his smartphone, and demanding all his phone records and browser history from his internet provider. 

They also put Schiff on notice they planned to investigate further by interviewing neighbors and past associates of Schiff in private rooms at the police station. Police said since Schiff had not been formally charged with a crime, yet, he or his legal counsel would not be permitted to view these interviews while police determined whether to file charges.   

Schiff said this was all unnecessary – all anyone had to do was listen to the tape.  He said it was “a perfect conversation” with the boy.  And even the boy had said there was nothing wrong, after all.  But then it was revealed that the original tape had been edited – four seconds were missing (Schiff claimed it was inadvertent); his accusers demanded to know what was on those four seconds. What was Schiff trying to hide?

Everyone could only speculate.    

Police put up crime-scene tape around Schiff’s property.  TV networks camped out in front of his house.  Reporters interviewed his neighbors and former staff members, some of whom made disparaging comments about Schiff, which were the lead stories on every network. Selected excerpts from the supposed “confidential” police interviews started to leak to the media.

Just the excerpts that seemed to support the allegations against Schiff, however.  

Schiff got angry.  He lashed out at the media, his neighbors and the police investigators. He claimed the allegations were unfounded and orchestrated by a handful of neighbors and associates with whom he’d had past run-ins.  

But the more he complained, the more his accusers claimed that his protestations were simply further evidence of his guilt. 

Hmmm. Does this sound familiar?

Oh, and this was just a parody.  Okay?