To All My Blog Followers:

The Patriot Factor will be down tomorrow, Sunday, March 22nd, until midnight for site maintenance and updates.

See you all tomorrow at midnight with another new Op-ed...this one titled 'Selling Out Israel on Two Fronts.' 

Hope you all have a great Sunday.

Diane

Public School: Never Have so Many Paid so Much to Achieve so Little

Daniel J. Mitchell / Townhall Columnist

No other nation in the world spends as much on education as the United States.
According to our leftist friends, who prefer to measure inputs rather than outputs, this is a cause for celebration. I guess it shows we have the best intentions.

Or maybe we love our kids the most.

For those who prefer to focus on outputs, however, it’s very difficult to be happy about the results we’re getting compared to all the money that’s being spent. Heck, in some cases it’s almost as if we’re getting negative results when you compare inputs and outputs.

To paraphrase what Winston Churchill said about the Royal Air Force in World War II, never have so many paid so much to achieve so little.

Now we have more evidence that American taxpayers are paying a lot and getting a little (though I have to admit that non-teaching education bureaucrats have been big winners).

The Washington Post reports on some new research to see how America’s young adults rank compared to their peers in other nations.

The results aren’t encouraging.

This exam, given in 23 countries, assessed the thinking abilities and workplace skills of adults. It focused on literacy, math and technological problem-solving. The goal was to figure out how prepared people are to work in a complex, modern society. And U.S. millennials performed horribly. That might even be an understatement… No matter how you sliced the data – by class, by race, by education – young Americans were laggards compared to their international peers. In every subject, U.S. millennials ranked at the bottom or very close to it, according to a new study by testing company ETS.

There were three testing categories and Americans didn’t do well in any of them.

…in literacy, U.S. millennials scored higher than only three countries. In math, Americans ranked last. In technical problem-saving, they were second from the bottom. “Abysmal,” noted ETS researcher Madeline Goodman. “There was just no place where we performed well.”

Here’s the comparative data on literacy.

Weak Obama Economy Flunks Fed Scorecard on Rate Hikes

Donald Lambro / Townhall Columnist

 

You could almost see the assembled press corps' faces drop when the Fed's Open Market Committee said it wanted to see "further improvement" in the U.S. labor market before raising interest rates.

For months, these economic reporters have been telling us that the Obama economy was stronger than ever and that we were in the midst of "blistering job growth," as the liberal Washington Post bombastically characterized the employment market earlier this month.

Surely the Fed was now ready to say when they would remove the economy's low interest rate crutches.

But at her news conference Wednesday, to the dismay of the Obama apologists, Fed Chair Janet Yellen wasn't ready to go that far. And she made it clear that the Federal Reserve Board was in no hurry to start moving near-zero interest rates up to "normal" levels.

Some reporters tried to make much of why the Fed had dropped the word "patient" from their statement on when it was ever likely they would pull the life support plug on the underperforming Obama economy.

But Yellen testily replied that the Fed was in no rush to make irrational conclusions about the economy -- certainly not because of the dubious, everything's-coming-up-roses economic stories on the nightly network news shows.

"Just because we removed the word 'patient' from the statement doesn't mean we are going to be impatient," Yellen shot back.

With that tart response, "Yellen was putting her firm stamp on the policy of an institution she has led for just over a year -- and making clear that she will not be boxed in," writes New York Times economic analyst Neil Irwin.

U.S. fears Islamic State is making serious inroads in Libya
 

By Robert Spencer / Jihad Watch

 

Besides Libya, “Islamic State has also endorsed, or received expressions of loyalty, from other militants around the region, including factions based in Nigeria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.” U.S. analysts, however, forbidden as they are by Obama Administration policy to examine the beliefs, motives and goals of the jihadis, have no idea why […]

Read in browser »

 

Obama May Cut Direct Ties With Netanyahu
Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs

Obama’s jihad on the Jews just became official policy.

This is what I warned of in my book: The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America.

“Source: Obama May Cut Direct Ties With Netanyahu,”  By Algemeiner, March 19, 2015

President Obama is considering cutting all ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s YNet News reported on Friday. According to a source cited by the paper, the White House “is contemplating lowering its ties with Israel and putting Kerry as the sole liaison between the two states, as opposed to the open line Netanyahu now enjoys with Obama.”

“The president is pragmatic, if he were to think there was some gain to be made from talking...

Read the whole entry »

     

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Support for Hillary Clinton is Waning

FIX THIS NATION / Breaking News

According to a new online poll from Reuters, the controversy surrounding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account is hurting her standing among Democrats. While Clinton’s numbers remain high, support for her candidacy has dropped a full 15 points since February. Only 45 percent of Democrats now say they would support her bid for the White House. A third of Democrats surveyed say that the scandal has hurt the former Secretary of State politically. 

These numbers have to worry those inside the Hillary campaign, but they must be even more frightening for the DNC. They have literally put all of their eggs in one basket this time around. There is not a single other viable Democratic contender who has made even the slightest murmur about running. Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders have mentioned making a bid for the White House, but they are nothing to be concerned with. We have a better chance of watching Donald Trump take the oath of office in 2017 than Sanders, and Biden is a walking gaffe-machine. Unless someone can convince Elizabeth Warren to change her mind, Democrats are stuck with Clinton.

It’s not clear whether her still-strong numbers are a result of passionate support or a lack of choices. Without a viable alternative, there’s no way to know. The media has made a lot of hay out of her strong polling, but what does it really prove? It’s Hillary or no one. It’s Hillary or a Republican. And Democrats would probably rather see Obama issue an executive order giving himself a third term in office than support a Republican for president. Come to think of it, that could still happen.

Unless the DNC jumps ship, this will come down to how well Hillary can survive the scandal. So far, indications are that she is not prepared. Known for playing her cards close to the vest, she is not inclined to explain herself to the American people. Her speech at the UN last week was hardly sufficient. Nothing will satisfy her critics other than turning over the server itself to an independent investigation, and she has already said that is something she is unwilling to do. Therefore, we are left to simply trust her when she says there was nothing worth reading in the 30,000 emails she deleted. Just recipes and yoga tips. But we’ll never know for sure.

And it’s that uncertainty that is leading to the softening numbers. Democrats are as sick of scandal as Republicans, and scandal follows the Clintons like winter follows autumn. They are without morals, seeking power with the zeal of desperation. Whether what they do with that power is beneficial to the country or not is a matter of opinion, but even the Clinton Fan Club wishes his presidency had been a little cleaner. A little less fraught with questions. You don’t hear the name Monica Lewinsky too often anymore, but those of us who lived through that dark period of American politics remember. Do we really want to go back there?

If the polls are anything to go by, an increasing number of Democrats do not.

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RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS...LIVE

Saturday, March 21st, on RIGHT SIDE PATRIOTS on CPR Worldwide Media from 11am to 1pm EST, Craig and Diane will discuss the fallout from BiBi's landslide victory and Tuesday's looming deadline for an Iranian nuclear deal to hopefully NOT be put into place.

Hope you can tune in:
http://cprworldwidemedia.net/radio
And chat with us live at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/cprworldwidemedia/