To hear the media tell the story of Joe Biden’s polling collapse, the president has really just been beset by bad luck, vaccine skeptics, and an obstinate opposition party in Congress. In reality, voters have been forced to confront the fact that Biden is incompetent—with Exhibit A being his disgraceful abandonment of Americans in Afghanistan.

This week, both Politico and the Washington Post attempted to distract from the obvious. Neither outlet even mentioned Afghanistan as a reason for the polling collapse. Yet the polling data shows a sharp collapse beginning in late August, at the same time as the withdrawal when no other major developments arose in the pandemic, the filibuster, or any of the other topics the media claims to be driving Biden’s low approval numbers.

Biden’s utter incompetence has created a confidence crisis with Americans. 

But legacy media is culpable in the confidence crisis as well.

They are, after all, complicit in Biden’s disgrace. 

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In the latest employment report, we learned that the economy only added 194,000 jobs last month, the lowest number in a year.

But why? 

After all, there are plenty of jobs available—and many of the incentives not to work, such as extended benefits associated with Covid relief—ended in September. Economists expected far more people to go to work once they were kicked off the dole. 

They turned out to be wrong, because economics isn’t just about incentives, it’s also about culture, and we have undergone a cultural revolution, one in which idleness is no longer stigmatized. 

For most of the history of this country, the able-bodied who were unwilling to take available jobs were not respected. Of course, some people couldn’t find work, and no one faulted them for that. But to be young and able and simply not work was unheard of. 

Now, that has changed—and there’s not a simple government fix.

But: We can start by working … and teaching our young people the dignity of work.

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Inflation recently hit a 30-year high. It’s not just the Consumer Price Index—which is the most-often used measurement of inflation; price hikes are evident in a wide variety of measurements. I’ve been arguing that our current policy environment was likely to create high inflation, based on various technical factors, especially money supply/demand. But for all the technical discussion about inflation, we miss a major point if we ignore one simple moral truth: Inflation is theft. 
 
Medieval Catholic theologians argued that debasing currency was the equivalent of Ahab taking Naboth’s vineyard. Reformation theologians argued it violated the 8th commandment. It is condemned by the Torah as an abomination and denounced by the Old Testament Prophets because it robs the poor. Inflation isn’t fundamentally a math problem. It’s a moral problem obscured by hyper-Keysnian mathematical models and politicians punishing savers to buy votes. 

It is debasement in both senses of the word. 

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It’s true. Parents are a child’s first teacher. But not anymore, it seems, if woke America has anything to say about it.
 
In Virginia’s gubernatorial debate, Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe said it out loud: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach.”
 
Understandably, many parents don’t agree. During covid, they saw what their kids are learning, and they didn’t like it.
 
So they’re showing up at school board meetings to advocate for their children. Some topics are controversial, like critical race theory, mask mandates, and the pornographic materials available in some school libraries.  
 
Some meetings have grown heated, and of course threats and violence are always wrong. But it’s ludicrous that the National School Boards Association has called this parent pushback “domestic terrorism,” and demanded the Biden Administration use tools like the Patriot Act to suppress political dissent. And it’s frightening that the Biden Administration would even consider it.
 
That’s not what we do in America.

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You may have missed it, but last week was Banned Books Week in the United States—and you didn’t miss anything. It’s a program undertaken some 40 years ago by the American Library Association. But there are really are no banned books in the United States—at least not in the sense that the American Library Association wants to tell you. 
 
When you look at the list of the books they claim have been banned, it turns out not a single one of them has actually been banned. Sure: Some have been complained about, but none has been banned.
 
But: There are books that are now effectively banned, but they’re not the books that the ALA is willing to speak up about. One example of a book that really is marginalized right now is “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” by Ryan Anderson”—a solid, well researched book that you cannot get on Amazon today.
 
It starts with books but it’s really about ideas, and it’s the ideas that are in danger of being banned. But, that’s not the focus of those who are behind Banned Books Week—and therein is a parable.

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Of course it’s sad to have seen a totalitarian response to Covid in places like China – but few of us are surprised. What’s dismaying is that some of the same draconian measures seem to have leeched into the liberal democracies of the western world.  

Australia is perhaps the best—or rather the worst—example.  In the second year of the pandemic, Australia still forbids its citizens from leaving the country and requires masks even when people are outside and socially distanced. South Australia has an intrusive facial recognition and geolocation app. And in some parts of the country, you can’t even leave home without an excuse from an official government list. The military enforces these rules, and dissenters are arrested and fined.

Americans have watched these deprivations with growing horror. On YouTube, there are films that record police interactions that resemble officers from a Soviet era state more than our easygoing Aussie cousins.

Perhaps the totalitarian measures will keep Australia relatively Covid-free. But at what cost?

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In Joe Biden’s newest assault on American’s privacy, he’s proposing that banks be required to give the IRS information for all accounts holding more than $600. 

The policy is supposed to reveal tax dodging by the wealthy. But banks are already required to report transactions of $10,000 or more. It’s hard to imagine how dropping the threshold all the way down to $600 is going to ensnare the rich. Instead, it will just allow vast data collection on everyone.

And the IRS hasn’t shown it can be trusted. Earlier this year, IRS data on thousands of taxpayers was leaked to the ProPublica website and then published. That’s not all. Remember the Lois Lerner scandal during the Obama years, when some organizations were targeted just because those in charge at the IRS disagreed with their politics? 

I don’t want to be audited for saying this—but until the IRS has shown it won’t abuse its powers, it’s a terrible mistake to give it any more power over Americans’ lives.

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The culture of death had a big win in the House of Representatives last week. Democrats pushed through legislation known as the Women’s Health Protection Act. It is one of the most radical pro-abortion pieces of legislation adopted anywhere, anytime on planet earth. 

The final vote was 218 to 211. Every single vote in favor of the bill was a Democrat. 

This bill would allow for sex-selection abortions. It would allow for abortion of unborn babies marked by the genetic pattern for down syndrome. It would effectively do away with all state-level restrictions on abortion. And: It would effectively allow those abortions all the way up until the point of birth.

This is where we are. This isn’t a hypothetical piece of legislation. This is actual legislation that in space and time and history passed the United States House of Representatives, on a party-line vote, just days ago.

Friday, September 24, 2021— a date that must live in infamy.

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The Republicans want no part of a debt ceiling hike-and good for them.

Democrats wanted the White House. They got it.

Democrats wanted to keep the House in 2020. Speaker Pelosi got her wish ...barely.

Democrats wanted the Senate majority. Now Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has it.

Democrats have all they need to bring up their giant spending bill to the floor, including massive tax hikes and a debt ceiling increase attached.

The nation is out of borrowing authority-so Congress must either pass a hike in that debt authority, pass a stand-alone bill as part of a stopgap measure or as part of the massive spending-and-tax bill.

The last option won’t require any GOP votes. But it would require Democrats to get to an agreement among themselves on which taxes to raise, how much to spend, when to spend it, and on who.

But: Republicans should have no part of this inflationary giant boondoggle.

Republicans need to have message discipline: Just. Say. No.

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Biden administration spokespeople and the press seem eager to shift our attention from the Afghanistan debacle.

Last week, the Secretary of Homeland Security admitted only 3 percent of the 60 thousand Afghans who’ve been brought to America have special immigrant visas. Those eligible for such visas are Afghans who worked for the US military. They’re at greatest risk of being murdered by the Taliban. 

NBC News reported that, as of May, some 20,000 Afghans had applied for the special immigrant visas. When their families are included, the total eligible for such protection is at least 70,000.

All this means are those who need and deserve our protection most have been abandoned, even as the vast majority of Afghan evacuees brought to this country are completely unvetted.

It’s just another way the Biden administration has managed to betray both America and our allies in the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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