Why in the world would schools and their officials seek to hide such impressive academic achievements that recognized excellence and could benefit them and their families for a lifetime?

The answer is jaw-dropping and antithetical to everything that America historically stood for, encouraging and rewarding exceptionalism by whoever could achieve it.

The school leaders hid these achievements because they did not want to hurt the feelings of the more numerous non-achievers who failed to reach that admirable level or didn’t bother trying.

You know, Equity.

Well, now comes another stunning tale along the same lines. New York State education officials were embarrassed last year, to put it mildly, that so many of the state’s third to eighth graders did so poorly on the standard annual statewide math and English tests.

The reason, of course, is that each student lost more than a full academic year of in-class instruction during the pandemic in favor of the teacher-favored remote learning that provided poor results.

In one major New York City, not one single eighth grader showed math proficiency.

Given such results, educators did not want to follow the science. So, instead of teaching up a storm to get caught up, state education officials simply lowered the scores of what denotes proficiency.

You know, Equity.

As you may have gathered here by now, that did not sit well with me. Hence, this week’s audio commentary.

The most recent Malcolm on the Right audio commentary concerned politicians’ empty photo ops in general and Vladimir Putin’s specifically. He (or someone closely resembling him) showed up in Russian-occupied Ukraine and took a closely-filmed tour with some “locals” in the background of every picture

But some photos don’t lie. They were the same people gathered at every stop, most likely Russian government security agents. The streets Putin drove along had been cleared of the 22,000 estimated civilians killed on Putin’s orders by the indiscriminate Russian shelling last year. And there was no rubble in sight,

My recent columns and other posts are all gathered here and available for easy bookmarking. One that drew a large readership examined Russia’s recent downing of an unarmed U.S. drone in international air space over international waters.

Joe Biden’s response to such bullying was actually a non-response. He did nothing. Said nothing. No response of any kind. Presumably, he knew about it.

I found this quite disconcerting. U.S. media did not.

This is how our international adversaries test the “leadership” of our 80-year-old commander-in-chief, who wants to keep that job until he’s 86.

Bookmark this incident in your own mind, ‘Putin Owns Biden After His Empty Response to Drone Downing Invites More.’ Because these adversaries — be they Russia, China, North Korea, or some other troublemaker — watch for these weaknesses.

And they’ll pull another stunt or stunts down the road thinking they can. You can take that to your bank unless it has collapsed like the others.

Finally, my repeated urging to read the regular weekly Ukraine war updates by my colleague, Streiff, a former infantry officer whose experienced insights and knowledge of things military teach me several new things every week.