Iraq will go down in history as one of President Barack Obama's greatest achievements, said Vice President Joe Biden in 2010, cementing his reputation as the biggest dunce ever to serve in that office. An Islamist army headed by a man who was in U.S. custody until Mr. Obama became president has reached the outskirts of Baghdad, the headless corpses of more than 1,000 men, women and children strewn in its wake. Our embassy staff is being evacuated.

On Tuesday (6/10), Rep. Eric Cantor, R-VA, became the first House majority leader in US history ever to be defeated in a primary election. No one in Washington saw this coming. Most try harder to spin the result than to understand why it happened. They will regret it. It was chiefly the impression he was too close to wealthy special interest groups; too timid in defending the values his constituents hold dear that did in Eric Cantor. Their fondness for cheap labor is why big business supports travesties such as the "Gang of 8" immigration bill. His constituents think Rep. Cantor cared more for their money, and Wall Street's, than for them. But those who say illegal immigration wasn't an important issue are idiots -- or think you are. Giddy Democrats think the majority leader's defeat is a problem just for Republicans. But it isn't only Republicans who notice our obese, dysfunctional government serves mostly a politically connected elite.

It's the straw that broke the camel's back, the galactic blunder that's sent virtually every Democrat in a competitive race sprinting for the tall grass. I'm referring to the trade of five senior Taliban commanders for, as Mad Magazine so aptly put it, "one deserting weasel." Desertion in wartime is a capital offense. Team Obama treats it as if it were like cutting an 8:00 a.m. class to sleep in after a night of partying. The only military crime worse than deserting your post in a combat zone is to turn your gun on your comrades. If reports from multiple sources that he collaborated with the Taliban are true, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl may have done that, too. For months after he walked away from his post, the Army made a massive effort to find Sgt. Bergdahl.  But when reports mounted Sgt. Bergdahl was collaborating, the Army decided it wasn't worth risking the lives of more soldiers to get him back. Now and then the military has sought return of a deserter. George Washington offered to trade Maj. John Andre, whose capture foiled Benedict Arnold's plot to sell West Point to the British, for Arnold.   But Washington planned to hang the traitor, not fete him as a hero -- as Mr. Obama has done.

When Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, 23, walked away from his guard post at OP-Mest in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan June 30, 2009, he left behind his rifle, helmet, flak jacket -- and a note saying he'd become disillusioned with the Army. "I am ashamed to be an American," he wrote in an email. "The horror that is America is disgusting." Afghans in Yahya Khel, a village two miles away, said PFC Bergdahl asked for their help in getting in touch with the Taliban. A Taliban deputy district commander in Paktika province told the London Sunday Times PFC Bergdahl taught him how to turn a mobile phone into a remote control for a roadside bomb. Many in the Intelligence Community think PFC Bergdahl was an "active collaborator," reported James Rosen of Fox News. The White House had expected "near euphoria" to break out when the deal was announced, said Chuck Todd of NBC News. It did - among the Taliban, not Americans. This was a "great victory," said Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

The 18th century playwright Richard Brimsley Sheridan wrote one of the comedic classics of the British theatre, A School for Scandal.  We certainly have such a school in the White House today. President Barack Hussein Obama's usual response to scandals swirling about his administration is to stall until people lose interest. When a scandal breaks, the president expresses surprise (he didn't know what was going on until he heard about it from the news media) and outrage (he's "madder than hell"). He vows to get to the bottom of it, but doesn't actually do anything. In the past, the news media have covered for Mr. Obama when he's hidden policy failure in a flurry of words. But now they've begun to take note of the widening gulf between what he says and what he does.

The first five months of 2014 have been the coldest since the National Weather Service began keeping records in 1888.  If "climate change" alarmists got out more, they might have noticed. Between 1979 -- when weather satellites started measuring temperatures in the lower troposphere -- and 1998, they rose about 1.1  degrees Celsius (1.98 degrees Fahrenheit). Temperatures stopped rising since then, and have fallen since 2012. The "pause" in warming (212 months) is now longer than the warming trend was (211 months). The earth has warmed about 16 degrees F since the last ice age. The net increase since 1979 -- 0.19 degrees C (0.34 F) -- is well within the range of natural fluctuation. So why, as President Obama says so often, do 97 percent of scientists agree climate change is "real, man-made, and dangerous?" Because they don't agree. The Warmists led by Mr. Obama are running a Consensus Scam.  Here's how the scam works.

It's been a month since we learned up to 40 of more than 1,400 veterans on a secret waiting list at the VA hospital in Phoenix may have died while waiting up to a year for treatment. Since that CNN broadcast April 23, doctored records and preventable deaths have been reported at 25 other VA facilities. It wasn't until yesterday (5/21) that President Barack Hussein Obama spoke in public about the scandal. He'd learned of it from news reports, said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. That's also how the president learned the Obamacare web site was a mess; the IRS was targeting conservative groups; security at the Benghazi consulate was lax, aides said. Evidently no one who works for Mr. Obama ever tells him anything. "I will not stand for it," Mr. Obama said. "There must be consequences." But he took no steps either to alleviate the suffering of veterans, or to punish those who've neglected them. 

Liberals don't like black conservatives, but maybe God does. "Ben Carson is warming to the idea of running for president," Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard wrote after interviewing the famous neurosurgeon. He'd prefer not to be a candidate himself, Dr. Carson says. But "if I felt called by God to officially enter the world of politics, I would certainly not hesitate to do so," he wrote in his book "One Nation," released today (5/20). America is lurching into crisis because "God, with the big ‘G' is being replaced by government with the little ‘g,'" former Rep. Allen West, R-Fla, warned in a stemwinder at the Floyd County Republican dinner in Rome, Georgia last Thursday (5/15). Liberals tend to snark when evangelicals talk this way. They shouldn't. If they earnestly seek His counsel, God will show them how they are to serve, Dr. Carson and Mr. West sincerely believe. Evangelicals have from time to time confused something they'd like to do with what God wants them to do. And if God wants Ben Carson, or Allen West, or both, to run for president, that doesn't mean He expects either to win. On the other hand, that may be precisely what God has in mind.

Ever since President Barack Hussein Obama promised to "cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year," discussion has focused on how much more health insurance costs families and businesses. It's easy to understand why. In the 12 months between February of last year and this February, premiums for individual and family policies rose more than in the eight years preceding combined, according to eHealth Insurance. In the first 3 months of 2014, premiums rose 12 percent for individual policies, 11 percent for small group policies, according to Morgan Stanley's quarterly survey of insurance brokers. If premiums rise at the same rate for the rest of the year, individual policies would go up 48 percent in 2014; small group policies 44 percent. Our focus on the hardships Obamacare has imposed on many families obscures how badly the taxpayers are getting hosed.  At its heart and by its numbers, it is a criminal fraud.

The federal government is too big, too powerful, said 66 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll in January.  Big government is "a threat to individual liberty," said 54 percent in a Rasmussen poll in April; a bigger threat than big business or big labor, said 72 percent in a Gallup poll in December. The tax system needs sweeping changes, said 72 percent in a Pew poll last May. Replace it with a flat tax, said 62 percent in a Reason-Rupe poll in April. A special prosecutor should be appointed to investigate the IRS, said 76 percent in a Quinnipiac poll in February. Abortions should be restricted to the first three months of pregnancy, said 84 percent in a Marist poll in January.  All these views and others like them are more in accord with what Republicans think than with what Democrats think. But many who hold them vote for Democrats. Why?

At least 40 veterans on a secret waiting list at the Veterans Administration hospital in Phoenix have died while waiting months -- in some cases a year or more -- for appointments, a whistleblower told CNN. The secret waiting list was a scheme by managers to get around the VA rule that patients should see a doctor within 30 days of making an appointment, said Dr. Sam Foote. When a vet asked for an appointment, his request wasn't entered in the official computer system, said Dr. Foote, who worked at the VA hospital in Phoenix for 24 years. The patient's data was kept instead on a secret electronic list. If a vet died while waiting for an appointment, his or her name was deleted from the secret list. There was no official record he or she had ever asked for treatment. This conspiracy to commit what amounts to murder wasn't confined to Phoenix, but is just the tip of the VA's criminal iceberg.

"Obamacare is on a winning streak," wrote Sam Baker in the National Journal April 16, the day the administration claimed 8 million people have signed up for it. Good news is "snowballing," he said. "Enrollment has surged beyond expectations. Costs are coming in lower than predicted." The fact that enrollment has exceeded the goal of 7.1 million the administration set last fall means the debate over Obamacare is "over," President Barack Hussein Obama said. There are three rules of the thumb for evaluating things politicians say to which journalists ought to pay more heed: Rule #1: When a politician proclaims debate on an issue "over," he means his side is losing it. The truth, of course, is the president wants to change the subject because Obamacare is killing Democrats.

"Born in the small rural mining town of Searchlight (on Dec. 2, 1939), (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid grew up in a small cabin without indoor plumbing, and attended a two-room elementary school," his official biography says. "His father was a hard rock miner with an eighth grade education and his mother never completed high school; yet, the youngest of Harry and Inez Reid's four sons would go on to achieve the American dream." Sen. Reid has a net worth between $2.57 million and $6.28 million, according to the personal financial disclosure form he filed with the Senate in 2012. Amassing a fortune of that size is a remarkable feat for someone who has spent all but two years of his working life in "public service."

U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman sentenced television pitchman Kevin Trudeau to 10 years in prison for making false claims in a weight loss book he wrote, and was hawking on tv. Mr. Trudeau has been involved in one scam after another for most of his life, Judge Guzman noted before imposing what the Chicago Tribune said was an unusually lengthy prison term for a contempt conviction. "He has treated federal court orders as if they were mere suggestions," Judge Guzman said. "That type of conduct simply cannot stand." Mr. Trudeau got what he deserved, said radio talk show host Rusty Humphries. But he said Mr. Trudeau's claims for his weight loss program were not as blatantly false as those made about Obamacare by the president and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  Ms. Sebelius belongs in jail, yet she has a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Virtually all Americans applaud Obamacare's ostensible goals -- to cut the cost of health insurance, reduce the number of Americans who are uninsured. Thanks to Obamacare's flawed design and inept implementation, we know how not to achieve them. Obamacare imposes 2 1/2 times the costs as it provides in benefits, according to a study by the American Action Forum. More than twice as many Americans say they've been hurt by the law as have benefited from it. Obamacare has worsened the problems it was supposed to solve. Here's how to ameliorate them:

The secret to surviving, The Gambler told Kenny Rogers, is to "know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run." It's time for her fellow Democrats to fold their Obamacare cards, says pollster Celinda Lake. "In terms of Obamacare, don't defend it, say it was flawed from the beginning, and we're going to fix it," Ms. Lake said at a poll briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor March 25. This "mend it don't end it" strategy was followed by Alex Sink in the special election for a House seat in Florida March 11.  It failed, as will other Dem attempts.  Here's why.

"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy," said Benjamin Franklin. "An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy." But it's been tough sledding for equal protection of the laws these last five years. The president alters at his whim laws passed by Congress, exempting some, but not others, from Obamacare provisions. His attorney general won't prosecute civil rights offenses -- if the victims are white. Pennsylvania's attorney general won't prosecute bribe-taking politicians -- if they are black. The scofflaws could be reined in -- if plaintiffs prevail in lawsuits which got hearings in courts in Washington D.C. last week.

"The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David," began a lengthy story in the Washington Post March 20. "The finding about the Koch acreage is likely to inflame the already contentious debate about the Keystone XL Pipeline," said reporters Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin. Which was the purpose of a two page "report" issued by the International Forum on Globalization, on which the Post story is based. "IFG's intention is to demonstrate the Koch-Keystone connection," Executive Director Victor Menotti  told the Post reporters.  Which exists only in the feverish imagination of the far left group.   Here's the story of how the crooked left-wing shyster jouranlism of the Washington Post was exposed.

Investment banker Kenneth Bellando, 28, was found dead March 12 on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building on Manhattan's East side where he lived. Police think he jumped from the roof of the six story building. A former investment bank analyst at JP Morgan, Mr. Bellando had been working at Levy Capital since January. His brother, John, is a chief investment officer at JP Morgan. Mr. Bellando is the 11th financial professional -- the 4th with ties to JP Morgan -- to die mysteriously in the last two months. One of them, American Title Services president Richard Talley, 57, was found dead in the garage of his home in suburban Denver Feb. 7. Police have ruled his death a suicide.  Mr. Talley shot himself in the head and torso eight times with a nail gun, police said. That's tough to do  Suicide or suicided?

Aging industrialists Charles and David Koch are "un-American," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a speech on the Senate floor Feb. 26. That's an expression we haven't heard much since the early 1950s, when Joe McCarthy was accusing Army dentists, State Department clerks and various and sundry others of being secret Communists. Back then, liberals thought it was vile to call someone "un-American." Some still do.  Sen. Reid's screed was "the definition of McCarthyism," said Joe Scarborough, host of the "Morning Joe" program on MSNBC. His guests March 6th agreed.  So just who is Un-American here?

Obamacare will reduce the earnings of its 300,000 members by up to $5 an hour, said a union which represents chiefly lower wage workers in service industries. Obamacare "threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours, and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive coverage," said Unite Here. "The Obamacare website says (my husband and I) would have to pay $8,057.04 a year more to keep the great insurance we have now," said Angela Portillo, a maid at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas. "That's a $3.87 per hour pay cut." Americans who've been hurt by Obamacare outnumber those who say they've benefited from it by more than 2 to 1, according to a Rasmussen poll March 3 and a Gallup poll March 6. Administration officials hold out hope for a rush of signups before the March 31st deadline. I, by contrast, hold out hope my retirement will be financed by the arrival of a caravan of unicorns laden with baskets filled with gold dust. My hope may be the more realistic.

In the 34 states which will conduct elections for the U.S. Senate in November, voters prefer the Republican candidate, 50 percent to 42 percent, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll March 4. Democrats currently hold 21 of these seats.  Republicans need a net gain of 6 to take control of the Senate.  Up to 14 Democrats could be vulnerable. To preserve some Democrat scalps, President Barack Hussein Obama announced last week another delay in enforcement of the Obamacare provision requiring cancellation of "substandard" health plans. It will conceal from some Americans for a while the bad news in store for them.  But a stay of execution is not the same as a pardon. Mere postponement won't mollify the millions worried about what Obamacare portends for their health insurance policies, their choice of doctors, or their jobs. Obamacare will turn the 2014 and 2016 elections into a nightmare for the Dems.  Why, then, won't they do anything about it?

"The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine," President Barack Hussein Obama said in a brief statement from the White House after Russia invaded the Crimea Feb. 28. Then he left for the Washington Hilton to declare the bar open at a function for the Democrat National Committee.  When intelligence officials came to the White House the next day to brief, the president didn't attend. "Rarely has a threat from a U.S. president been dismissed as quickly - and comprehensively - as Obama's warning Friday night," noted Washington Post reporter Scott Wilson. The seizure of the Crimea "is really 19th Century behavior in the 21st Century," said Secretary of State John Kerry.  Mr. Putin, alas, "has not received the memo on 21st-century behavior," said the Washington Post.

Each day brings new reports of seriously ill patients losing their doctors; financially struggling families socked with huge health insurance premium increases; workers who've had their hours cut back or lost jobs because of Obamacare. Twenty nine percent of respondents in a Kaiser health tracking poll Feb. 26 say they've been hurt by Obamacare; 17 percent say they've benefited from it. The number negatively affected is sure to rise, while new problems are sure to keep cropping up. The federal government has spent $1.2 billion to subsidize troubled state health care exchanges.  But heartbreaking stories like these examples below make the mammoth waste of taxpayers' money almost not worth mentioning.  Any advocate of Obamacare should now be seen as criminally immoral.

For the time being, the good guys have won in Ukraine, no thanks to the pusillanimous wimps in Washington and the European Union. "The seismic shift in Ukraine was achieved by its people, not outside forces, and not its politicians," said Andrew Wood. It may not last long. Russia is conducting "military maneuvers" near the Crimea in southeastern Ukraine, where Russia has an important naval base. Armed men seized the regional parliament building in the Crimea, and the regional airport. "The eruption in Kiev could set off a tsunami that will engulf us all," warned British historian Mark Almond.  * * * * As gutsy and determined as the protestors in Kiev - but recipients of far less attention - are the protestors in Venezuela.  Anti-government demonstrations have grown since the arrest of opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez Feb. 18. A gun-toting ex-general has become a hero to the protest movement.  * * * * This time of rising international tensions is a good time to gut the U.S. military, the Obama administration thinks.  * * * * It was, said Marc Caputo of the Miami Herald, the best speech of Marco Rubio's career.  Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan is impressed he gave it with so little preparation: * * * * Obamacare is certain now to fall far short of the administration's original goal of 7 million signups by the March 31 deadline, so HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is trying to more the goalposts. She should try telling the truth for a change, recommends Charles Krauthammer.  "It's easier to memorize." * * * * All the Obamacare horror stories are untrue, Dingy Harry Reid said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday.  "I wonder if Reid calling millions of Americans liars will show up in any ads," said Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin.  I'd bet on it.

Leaders of other countries don't respect President Barack Obama, say 53 percent of respondents in Gallup's annual World Affairs poll, conducted Feb. 3-6. That only 53 percent of Americans think this is a clear indictment of the news media's coverage of foreign affairs. He would lead the world by "deed and example," not try to "bully it into submission," Sen. Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2007. In a major foreign policy speech in 2008, Mr. Obama said he would focus on: "ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century." No president has talked the talk so well, or walked the walk so badly.  Here's a compendium of just how badly.

As America suffers through a brutal winter as well as a political/economic winter with Curse of Zero, let's step back and take a longer look at the historical era we are enduring. His research from 1789 on indicates capitalist economies go through a cycle of boom and bust roughly every 50 to 60 years, Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff wrote in 1925.  The "Kondratieff Wave," K-Wave, for short, was given its name by Joseph Schumpeter, arguably the greatest economist of the 20th Century, who based his work on business cycles on it. Kondratieff offered no opinion about why the long waves he'd identified existed, but said they are "a very important and essential factor in economic development, a factor the effects of which can be found in all the principal fields of social and economic life." The "seasons" within a K-Wave each last for roughly the same amount of time, but the length and strength of each vary somewhat, depending on how people behave. The last Kondratieff "Spring" began around 1950.  "Winter" started around 2000.  Earlier K-Wave "Winters" (since 1789) have lasted from 9 to 20 years.  The last three have averaged 16 years.  They always end in depression.  Buckle your seatbelts.  Hard times - really hard times - are fast approaching. Yet...

The violence in Ukraine, during which 75 were killed, nearly 600 injured, is over - for now.  President Viktor Yanukovich, who ordered the crackdown, has agreed to early elections, and to a return to the constitution of 2004, which has a weaker presidency. Yanukovich made the concessions after the widely televised brutality of the crackdown - including snipers shooting down unarmed protesters -- bled away critical political support. * * * * With Ukraine descending into chaos, Venezuela already there, the situation bleak in Afghanistan, bleaker in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry has his attention focused squarely on...climate change.  It's the "most fearsome" weapon of mass destruction of them all, he said in Jakarta Sunday. * * * * Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell lied to Congress about Benghazi, say Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee.  * * * * President Obama's proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour (from $7.25) would cost half a million jobs by 2016, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday (2/18). The White House and prominent Democrats responded to the CBO report as you might imagine.  Even NBC's Chuck Todd says the White House response was "petty." * * * * In what the Detroit Free Press called a "devastating defeat" for the United Auto Workers, workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted against union representation, 712-626. Volkswagen management was officially neutral, in practice sorta kinda supportive of the union organizing effort. The liberals at In These Times asked: How could the UAW lose an unopposed campaign? Michael Barone, the Labor Union Report and National Review's John Fund provide answers. * * * * Slow Joe Biden signaled this week Obamacare signup numbers will fall well short of predictions.   To boost the numbers, the Obamunists are pursuing the uninsured the way they did lofo voters in Broward County, Florida, but aren't having much success.  Slightly less than one percent of those contacted have signed up. * * * * Common Core is now so unpopular, even liberals are dumping on it.

"Beware the Ides of March," the soothsayer warned in Shakespeare's play "Julius Caesar." A Roman religious holiday, the Ides (15th) of March was the day on which Roman consuls assumed office -- and the day Caesar was assassinated. For the United States, and the world economy, the Ides will be around March 4, Grady Means predicted in October of 2012. Mr. Means isn't a doomsayer who's predicted 11 of the last two recessions.  He isn't trying to sell gold, silver, or freeze-dried food.  He was Managing Partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, an assistant to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, wrote well regarded books on international finance. And he isn't alone.  The decline in manufacturing orders in January was the steepest in more than 30 years, the latest evidence the U.S. economy is "exhausted," said David Goldman, who headed bond research at the Bank of America. A little nudge could push it into recession. Obamacare could provide that nudge -- in March.  Here's why.

The big news this week was the announcement by our caudillo-in-chief that for the 27th time, he's going to make a unilateral change in Obamacare.  This is both outrageous and amusing. * * * * Firms must certify to the IRS that ObamaCare was not and is not a factor in their staffing decisions, even though it is obvious that many employers of economic necessity are trimming staff and reducing hours due to the burden of ObamaCare's mandates.  Call this Omertacare, says Jim Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. * * * * It was jump the shark week for Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, who told the Dallas Morning News Tuesday that hey, maybe she could support a ban on abortions after 20 weeks.  * * * * The director of the Obamacare health exchange in Colorado has been placed on administrative leave after she pled guilty in a U.S. District Court in Montana Feb. 6 to eight counts of theft and fraud from a nonprofit housing agency in Billings. * * * * Guess what CBS blames for the cold spell we've been having. * * * * The hero of the week is is Billy Heroman of Heroman's Flowers in Louisiana who says - the IRS be damned - he's cutting jobs because of Obamacare.

All of us screw up from time to time.  But it's hard to imagine how anyone else could screw up anything else as badly as Obama and the Democrats have screwed up health care. Democrats may have believed Obamacare would do the things they promised when they rammed it through in the middle of the night of March 21, 2010. But it's clear now it does much more harm than good. Which President Obama in effect acknowledged Tuesday (2/11) when he said he'll put off until 2016 enforcement of the "employer mandate" for small businesses with 99 or fewer employees.  This is the 27th time he's unilaterally delayed a provision of the law, which he has no legal authority to do. So much for the Democrat claim Obamacare is "settled law." This is banana republic stuff, for which he ought to be impeached.  No president has the right to cherry pick what laws - or portions of laws - he'll enforce, or to say some Americans needn't obey them.

So enormous has been the harm done by the fraudsters running public K-12 schools, you'd think fraud in higher education couldn't possibly be worse.  You'd be mistaken. College tuition and fees increased 1,120 percent between 1978 and 2012 -- twice as much as health care, four times as much as the cost of living. Meanwhile, colleges and universities don't offer curriculums that adequately prepare students for the workforce, said 59 percent of senior executives surveyed by the Adecco Group, a staffing company; 77 percent of senior managers surveyed by Global Strategy Group. Garbage courses and majors have sprouted like mushrooms on a manure pile. Stanford offers more courses in yoga than in Shakespeare.  "Core curricula that once discussed the great tradition in literature, art and science have been elbowed offstage by banal courses in feminism, black studies and queer theory," said Stephan Kanfer of the Manhattan Institute.  "The result: students who can spout a line of political correctness designed to dazzle their peers and professors. With that and $1.50 they can get a bus ride downtown to the unemployment offices. "

America has problems more urgent than our dreadful schools, but none more serious.  Little contributes more to high unemployment, sluggish economic growth, rising income inequality, poverty and violent crime. Thirty two million adults -- 14 percent of the population, 19 percent of high school graduates -- can't read, according to a study last year by the U.S. Department of Education.  The literacy rate is no better than it was in 2003 and is worse than in 1993.  Of the students who come to his classroom, "only a small fraction have a functioning understanding of written English," said a high school teacher in Oakland, California in 2007.  "They do not know how to form a sentence.  They cannot write an intelligible paragraph."  Even more struggle to make change or balance a checkbook. It isn't for lack of resources.  Per pupil expenditures were $11,184 in 2009-2010.  This is worse than a tragic misallocation of resources, a gargantuan waste of money.  Ponder the fact that nearly one high school graduate in five is functionally illiterate.  Could there be a more egregious -- or more pernicious -- example of fraud?   The fraudsters -- Democrat politicians, teacher unions, educrats -- have done more harm than those engaged in other types of organized crime.  They belong in jail, not running our schools.

President Barack Hussein Obama spoke for 65 minutes Tuesday (1/28) night, but didn't say much.  And hardly anyone in the country paid any attention.  Did you? State of the Union addresses typically are laundry lists of a president's alleged accomplishments, and of his legislative goals for the coming year. It's difficult for even the most gifted speechwriters to turn laundry lists into spellbinding oratory.  But this was "the most plodding, enervated and pointless national address of his presidency," said John Podhoretz in the New York Post.  "Gone is the lyricism for which liberals swooned in 2008 and to a lesser extent in 2012," said Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin. "In its place are a list of half-measures and forced anecdotes about Obamacare."  They were "picayune --  high-tech hubs, broadband access for kids, the minimum wage," said Rich Lowry of National Review. "Is that all there is?" asked Ron Fournier of the National Journal.  The president touched on liberal hot buttons such as gun control and income inequality, but his touch was perfunctory.  This was the most startling passage in the SOTU:

Wendy Davis and Elizabeth Warren are feminist heroines.  Which indicates feminists these days don't expect much from their heroines.  Call them regressive-liberal heroines. Ms. Davis, a state senator in Texas, has parlayed the attention the national news media lavished upon her 11-hour filibuster against a bill to forbid abortions after 20 weeks into a campaign for governor. She could give Democrats "real people credibility," based on "her own personal story - an absent father, a sixth-grade-educated mother, a teen pregnancy, followed by life as a single mom in a mobile home, then community college and, at last, Harvard Law School," gushed the regressives at Time magazine. "The Today Show accompanied her back to the mobile home as if it were taking Abraham Lincoln back to the log cabin where he was raised," said Rich Lowry of National Review. Unlike Time and NBC, Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News checked out the claims Ms. Davis made in her campaign biography.  He found a few discrepancies.

What George Wallace and "Bull" Connor would have decried as "miscegenation" is commonplace in America today. Ten percent of all married couples in 2010 were interracial, a 28 percent increase since 2000, according to the Census Bureau. There were 157,000 interracial married couples in 1960, 5.4 million in 2010.  Nine million Americans reported being of mixed race, a 32 percent increase over 2000. At one time or another, all but 9 states (Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin) had laws forbidding mixed race marriages.  We've come a long way in half a century.  But there are still racists among us.  Especially among regressive liberals.  Call what they espouse Regressive Racism.   Here are some revolting examples of it.