Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
George Orwell said, "There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them." If one wants to discover the truth of Orwell's statement, he need only step upon most college campuses.
Faculty leaders of the University of California consider certain statements racism and feel they should not be used in class. They call it micro-aggression. To them, micro-aggressive racist statements are: "America is the land of opportunity." That is seen as perpetuating the myth of meritocracy. "There is only one race, the human race." Such a statement is seen as denying the individual as a racial/cultural being. "I believe the most qualified person should get the job." That's "racist" because it gives the impression that "people of color are given extra unfair benefits because of their race."
These expressions don't exhaust the list of micro-aggressions. Other seemingly innocuous statements deemed unacceptable are: "Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough," "When I look at you, I don't see color," or "Affirmative action is racist." Perhaps worst of all is, "Where are you from or where were you born?" For more of this, see a document released by The College Fix (http://tinyurl.com/ne8ckqn) titled "Diversity in the Classroom," UCLA Diversity and Faculty Development.
This micro-aggression nonsense, called micro-totalitarianism by my colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell (http://tinyurl.com/nxulxc), is nothing less than an attack on free speech. From the Nazis to the Stalinists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, and why is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control and confiscation. Free speech is a basic tool for indoctrination, propagandizing, proselytization. Once the leftists gain control, as they have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed. This is increasingly the case on university campuses...
College campuses are the beachheads of Marxist radical politicization and agitation. It's going to take a long time to take them back, but it can happen. Folks need to realize this is war.
The Angels were the hottest time in baseball before the All-Star break. Now it looks like they're heading into an epic post-All Star break collapse.
Last night Kole Calhoun hit a go-ahead home run in the eighth inning, but Huston "Blown Save" Street" couldn't close the deal. Former Angel Kendrys Morales hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the tenth.
Angel Manager Mike Scioscia needs to do something --- anything! --- to get this team back on track. This is ridiculous.
So far, no one's claimed responsibility, although Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian al-Qaeda affiliate, claimed credit for the 2002 Bali nightclub attack that killed 202.
Reports of at least 81 injured and 19 killed after a bomb exploded at the Ratchaprasong intersection in central Bangkok. Follow the latest developments here.
Also at Director Blue, "The Top 300 Conservative Websites, August 2015." I've dropped down to 231 in the rankings, for reasons of which I'm not sure. More competition, for one thing, but then Memeorandum rarely links me anymore (I've fallen out of their algorithm), which means I don't get the kind of residual linkage as the old days, say 2008. Besides that, I have no clue. Rule 5 blogging's a niche market, heh.
Donald Trump went back and forth with NBC host Chuck Todd on Sunday in one of his most combative interviews since announcing his presidential candidacy earlier this summer..."
Just as the European Union appears to have resolved one crisis, it risks being overwhelmed by another.
Last week eurozone finance ministers approved Greece’s new bailout, a major step toward ending a crisis that had threatened to tear apart Europe’s single currency. Meanwhile, the European Commission was outlining its latest efforts to address what it called the greatest migration crisis Europe has faced since the end of World War II.
Few believe the measures announced match the scale of the challenge. The EU border agency Frontex estimates that more than 100,000 migrants crossed into the EU in July alone, compared with 270,000 in the whole of 2014.
More than 50,000 turned up in Greece in July, more than in the whole of 2014. Many of them have been washing up in small inflatable boats on four small Greek islands. Similar numbers have been making their way to Italy from Libya, while 35,000 have arrived in July alone at the Hungarian border with Serbia.
Many are fleeing violence in Syria, Afghanistan and Libya; others are traveling from Iraq, Pakistan and the Horn of Africa in search of a better life. Most have paid large sums to traffickers who brazenly advertise their services via social media.
Once in Europe, many are intent on making their way to Northern Europe, where jobs are more plentiful. Germany reckons up to 600,000 migrants have arrived this year. Meanwhile, large numbers have congregated around the French port of Calais, where they have besieged the Channel Tunnel, hoping to smuggle themselves into the U.K.
The migration crisis may yet prove a bigger test of European cohesion than the euro crisis. Both pose fundamental questions about where the balance lies between national responsibility and intra-government solidarity. But whereas the Greek crisis was ultimately a dispute over money, the migration crisis concerns visceral questions of culture and identity.
It also has revealed serious deficiencies in the EU’s institutional and legal setup and exposed rifts between Northern and Southern Europe.
The problem is that national governments have responsibility for controlling their borders and deciding on whom to grant citizenship and asylum. But most countries have abolished border controls within the EU, allowing those inside to move freely between the member states.
That makes each country’s border and migration policies a common EU concern. In response, Brussels has put in place harmonized rules on treatment of asylum seekers. But many doubt how rigorously these rules are being applied, particularly in those countries receiving the bulk of the migrants, some of which have been overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge.
Under EU law, those claiming refugee status—as most migrants do—are entitled to be fed and housed while their cases are investigated, an expensive process. For a country such as Greece, in the midst of a deep financial crisis, the drain on resources has been too much, leading to angry scenes at reception centers on the island of Kos.
There, 12,000 migrants have arrived this summer, equivalent to more than a third of its population. Meanwhile, EU rules also say that refugees must be registered and fingerprinted in the country in which they first arrive, which then becomes responsible for housing them until their status is decided.
This system is now in disarray. Richer Northern European countries accuse Southern European countries of failing to keep track of illegal migrants, passing the problem on to them. This summer, France briefly reopened its border post with Italy. Meanwhile, Southern countries say they are unfairly being forced to take responsibility for migrants whose real objective is to head to the richer north.
This makes forging a common response to the crisis extraordinarily difficult.
Faced with harrowing reports of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean earlier this summer, the member states agreed to provide military assistance for search-and-rescue missions and efforts to disrupt smuggler networks off the coast of Italy and in the Aegean Sea. The EU has also handed out €2.4 billion ($2.66 billion) in emergency assistance to member states to help with the cost of managing the crisis. It also says it will use its diplomatic muscle to tackle the problem at source at a summit with leaders of African countries in November.
But when the commission proposed in June that all 28 members of the EU commit to a plan to resettle 20,000 refugees from outside the EU and relocate 40,000 migrants already inside, several countries—including Eastern European countries with no tradition of accepting refugees and richer countries such as the U.K. and Austria where anti-immigrant sentiment is strong—refused to participate. Some EU officials describe this as the darkest moment in EU history...
That's NIMBY politics at the international level. Not-in-my-backyard. You take care of the problem. It's ugly, but it's the way international politics works, and it's interesting that it's the EU system as a whole that's coming up short in response. That's not how institutional theories of cooperation conceptualize problems. Greater integration of states is supposed to facilitate collective action to mutual problems, but the migration crisis shows how self-interest causes collective action failures, and how institutional cohesion breaks down.
Lou Dobbs interviews retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters, who's not so pleased with the idea of "embedding" a few U.S. ground forces with Iraqi troops.
ATLANTA --- Republican presidential candidates are split on whether the U.S. should send ground troops to the Middle East to combat Islamic State forces.
And most of those who would commit troops offer few details on their plans.
“I don’t see anybody on our side coming up with a robust plan that truly would destroy” the Islamic State militants, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Graham stands out among Republicans hawks for his specifics. He has called for 20,000 American troops divided between Iraq and Syria.
“You can’t do this through the air,” Graham said.
Yet several other Republicans want to try — or at least not to get mired in the details beyond casting President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as weak and feckless. Clinton is Democrats’ 2016 favorite.
Businessman Donald Trump, who is leading most surveys of likely Republican primary voters, backed into a commitment of ground troops Sunday during a wide-ranging interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Trump said to cripple Islamic State group he would “take away their wealth” by reclaiming oil fields the group has commandeered. When host Chuck Todd told him that would take ground troops, Trump replied, “That’s OK.” But he sidestepped Todd’s reference to the potential number of troops.
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich blasted the Islamic State group: “All the religions of the world ought to stand up say, ‘You blow up innocent men, women and children and you think you’re going to paradise? There’s something wrong with you. You’re nuts.’”
But on ground troops, Kasich said he would deploy American forces only as part of an international coalition. “I don’t want to go alone,” he said.
The U.S. currently has about 3,500 troops working as trainers and advisers to Iraqi forces, but those Americans are not intended to engage in direct combat.
Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, blasted Obama and Clinton as “inconsistent” in the region. “We’ve done nothing in Syria,” Fiorina said of another country where Islamic State militants have a foothold.
But, she added, “I disagree that we’re at that point where we need to put tens of thousands of boots on the ground.”
Pressed on the question, Fiorina repeated that “the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Kurds and the Egyptians ... know this is their fight” and that they “need leadership resolve, support and material from us.”
The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions.
Read the whole thing at the link.
And then see the puerile, whiny response from Erick "Lumberjack" Loomis, at Lawyers, Gays, and Marriage, "On Amazon."
Jeff Bezos is a visionary businessman. But I've yet to hear that he forces people to work for his company. It's not Bezos but communists like Loomis who are "terrible, awful human beings."
Shoot, I'm surprised the Democrats in Sacramento aren't requiring mandatory Spanish and Chinese immersion courses for all English speakers. Either that, or you'll spend the rest of your days in a camp.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Going through a divorce has been difficult for Sepideh Saeedi. Not understanding what's happening in court because she isn't proficient in English has made the process even harder.
"When you don't understand what the judge is saying, what the other side's attorney is saying, it's very stressful," Saeedi, 33, who speaks Farsi, said after a recent court hearing in Redwood City
Legal advocates say throughout the state, litigants in divorce, child custody, eviction and other civil cases who have difficulty with English are going into court without qualified interpreters. Instead, many are forced to turn to friends or family members -- or worse yet, the opposing party -- for translation.
That's because California only guarantees access to an interpreter in criminal cases, not civil cases.
But the state is looking to change that. Under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice, California's Judicial Council this year approved a plan to extend free interpretation services to all cases by 2017.
"You can't have a court hearing without having your client understand it correctly," said Protima Pandey, a staff attorney with Bay Area Legal Aid.
Pandey said she always makes sure an interpreter is available for her clients, but many litigants in family court don't have attorneys to do that for them.
alifornia court officials say extending interpreter services to all cases won't be easy. California has the nation's largest court system spread out over a vast area with many rural counties. The state has about 7 million residents with limited English proficiency who speak over 200 languages.
The courts have also faced funding cuts in recent years that have seen courthouses close and staffs cut. There is no estimate yet on how much it would cost to provide interpreters in all cases, but the plan approved by the judicial council said the courts would need more than the $92 million they were spending.
"California's judiciary is committed to language access and eager to work out the best way to get that done," said state Supreme Court Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, who heads the group in charge of implementing the state's language-access goals.
Anyone with half a brain saw this stuff coming. Businesses will do what they need to do to stay in business. At big corporate chains like McDonald's you'll see increasing use of self-serve kiosks, and then of course robots.
Naturally, these moves will be attacked as "racist," but then everything's racist if it goes against the prevailing ideology of unicorns and rainbows.
The death toll in China from explosions at a warehouse storing hazardous materials rose to 112 Sunday, as authorities worked to remove chemical contamination.
Some 95 people, including 85 firefighters, remain missing following the blasts Wednesday night in the port city of Tianjin, 75 miles east of Beijing, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
State-run news publications The Paper and the Southern Metropolis reported that the warehouse was storing 700 tons of sodium cyanide — 70 times more than it should have been.
Sodium cyanide is a toxic chemical that can form a flammable gas upon contact with water, and several hundred tons would be a clear violation of rules cited by state media that the warehouse could store no more than 10 tons at a time, the Associated Press reported.
China's top prosecuting office announced Sunday that it was setting up a team to investigate possible offenses related to the massive blasts, including dereliction of duty.
Zhi Feng, general manager of the warehouse’s operator, Ruihai International Logistics, has been under police watch while he receives medical treatment to ensure he does not flee during an investigation, state media reported, without giving further details. Zhi was hospitalized after being injured in the disaster.
Meanwhile, a task force has been sent to find and measure the area contaminated by the toxic chemical and prevent its spread in sewage, and hydrogen peroxide has been used to reduce the level of sodium cyanide, Xinhua reported Sunday. No rescuers been made ill by chemical contamination, officials told the news agency. Used commercially for fumigation and extracting gold and silver from rock, exposure to sodium cyanide can be fatal...
Sometime back I notice Noah Rothman really going after Donald Trump on Twitter. And I like Noah. It's just, as I've said before, some journalists on the right are really invested in this campaign, to the extent that they appear like GOP operatives rather than reporters. And hey, it's not like I don't want Republicans to win. It's more like I want a conservative to win, and a lot of Republicans aren't very conservative. That's not to say that Donald Trump is, but genuinely hardcore conservatives at the grassroots are falling in love with this guy because he's the only one to give full-throated assertiveness to their positions on illegal immigration. This is the debate we've needed to have. That is, this is the debate the nation needs to be having, because we're definitely at the tipping point of preserving a lot of basic American values. And frankly, that's what's intrigued me about Donald Trump, despite the fact that he's got a long record of supporting left-wing positions. Shoot, Trump has long been boon coons with Bill and Hillary Clinton. In that sense, he's the consummate politician, jettisoning political incorrect associations when the times demand it.
Trump’s “plan” is an assault on not merely the illegal immigrants who have violated American laws, but those who have played by the existing rules to come to the United States. The proposal amounts to a declaration of war on America’s immigrant community, an attack on the foundational nature of America’s character as a melting pot for all the peoples of the world, and the inception of a police state that is incompatible with a free republican democracy.
Hyperbole isn't a strong enough word, but then, you have to read Trump's proposal.
Rothman, for one thing, argues that building a complete border wall all the way to Matamoros "is infeasible; the geography of the border simply does not allow for one unbroken wall." Okay, then build the wall where it is feasible and then beef up human security checkpoints where it's not. The main reason that Arizona and Texas have become the battlegrounds against illegal immigration in recent years is because California essentially militarized its border in the 1990s, and illegals simply moved to entry points further east. This has long been documented, and indeed, the Los Angeles Times has written about it frequently. Border walls work. If you build them, they don't come.
Rothman also complains about how much of Trump's plan, like "E-Verify," has been a staple of Republican reform proposals for like forever. The problem, of course, is that workplace eligibility regulations like this simply aren't enforced, even in red states like Texas. Indeed, sanctuary states like California actively prohibit enforcement of E-Verify regulations. Maybe Trump's plan can turn things around. Lord know there's room for improvement there. (And I don't buy the argument that rigorous enforcement alienates and thus hinders the cooperation of illegal immigrants. These criminals have no reason to cooperate with immigration enforcement to begin with. We need to get real about how we're going to follow through with enforcing policies already on the books. Local law enforcement has already abandoned any pretense of cooperation with federal authorities. As the Kathryn Steinle and Marilyn Pharis cases sadly prove just how true this is in California.)
I agree with Rothman about "birthright citizenship," however. Talk of reforming automatic citizenship for illegal alien children is mostly a sop to the nativist right, because frankly, birthright is strongly embedded in the Constitution and it'll take a constitutional amendment to change it, and that ain't happening. Better to keep illegals out of here in the first place.
And I can't comment knowledgeably on reform of the H1B visas program, and the related ins and outs of workplace-sponsored immigration programs (it's complicated, sheesh). I do know that they're abused to high heaven, and countries like China know are gaming the system like crazy. See Michelle Malkin on that, "The Big, Fat 'American Worker Recruitment First'- Lie of H-1B."
And Trump's plan sounds like a home run to me, in any case:
We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program. More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program's lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.
Finally, how much of Trump's plan is genuinely unworkable? Well, beyond birthright citizenship, hardly any of it at all. It's simply going to take someone's who's not afraid of the massive backlash of political correctness, and unending charges of racism. And as we've seen so far, not only is Trump unfazed by such criticism, he's also not been penalized politically for speaking out forthrightly on the crisis.
As I always say, let's see how it all shakes out. We're having another GOP debate on September 16th. Frankly, I can't wait to see how Trump does, and it should be especially interesting because Carly Fiorina's expected to be on the stage. This should be an extremely informative event, all the better because it's going to be held here in California, at the Reagan Library. CNN's putting it on too, so if Megyn Kelly's left-wing talking points weren't enough, I'm sure CNN's moderator Jake Tapper (formerly of far left-wing Salon) will pick up the pace.
The explosive first Republican debate has shaken up the 2016 GOP presidential race....
Businessman Donald Trump still leads the field for the Republican nomination. He gets 25 percent among GOP primary voters. He was at 26 percent before the debate. Trump’s support among women went from 24 percent two weeks ago to 21 percent now. He mostly held steady among men (28 percent).
The real-estate mogul maintains his first-place status despite also being judged in the poll as having the worst debate performance and being considered the least likeable Republican candidate. More on that later.
The August 6 Republican presidential debate was hosted by Fox News Channel in Cleveland. Several of the exchanges at the debate remained in the news for days after.
Trump's lead is no fluke. Let's see how long he can hold it. So far nothing --- no so-called "gaffes" or controversies --- seem to be slowing him down.
It was supposed to be different this time. After the wounds of 2008, many of them self-inflicted, Hillary Rodham Clinton rebooted for 2016 with a new message, new advisers and new energy.
But two dynamics have crystallized this month, suggesting the New Hillary is hobbled by old weaknesses. Once again, worried supporters see signs of a bunker mentality in response to bad news about her e-mail server and other controversies, and they see a candidate who can seem strangely blinkered to the threat posed by a lesser-known challenger.
“A lot of the people who were hired by the campaign were new to the Clintons,” said a prominent Democrat who counts both Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton as friends. “I kind of assumed it would be different. But it hasn’t changed.”
That Democrat and other supporters requested anonymity in order to discuss the shortcomings of a candidate whom they still overwhelmingly support and think can win the White House. Several supporters said that while no one is pulling the fire alarm, they see worrisome patterns emerging.
Among them: insularity, rigidity and a sense that the operation is tone-deaf to changes happening around it...
Authorities in Yosemite National Forest were trying to determine why a large tree limb fell early Friday, killing two children sleeping in their tents.
Park officials released few details about the accident, which occurred about 5 a.m. in the Upper Pines Campground in Yosemite Valley.
But witnesses described a grim scene at the campgrounds when the branch fell.
“I heard this loud bang and then a woman screaming at the top of her lungs,” camper Daniel Moore, told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I knew something was not right. I stepped outside to see what was going on and saw a lot of people clustered around their campground. It made me sick to my stomach when I figured out what had happened.”
Authorities described the victims as minors but did not disclose their identities or any other personal information...
It turns out that the flick's getting so-so reviews. Mostly, the films starts out strong, then sputters with plodding scenes of the band's infighting and black-ho "bacchanalia." Kenneth Turan, at the Los Angeles Times, is particularly bored by it, "NWA film 'Straight Outta Compton' starts fast but runs out of gas."
“Straight Outta Compton” celebrates N.W.A. as poster men for free speech in their perennial disputes with would-be censors. That’s an appropriate part of the equation, but the movie declines to discuss the group’s hate speech—the violence, misogyny, antigay views and scattershot racism that pervade its songs. (Anti-Semitism comes up only because Heller is outraged by Ice Cube’s attacks on him, as well as on N.W.A., the rapper’s former group, in his notorious song “No Vaseline.”)
DES MOINES — There in the center of the sweaty, frothing mob of bodies and cameras and microphones, reaching and shoving and snapping away as state troopers guided the mass along the concourse, was the blonde-haired billionaire, his ruddy, sunken face shaded under the brim of a bright-red ballcap.
For the 45 minutes it took him to walk from Gate 8 to the Iowa Pork Tent, onlookers stood agape, corndogs in one hand and smartphones in the other, shouting, pleading for a handshake, taking it in.
We love you Donald.”
“Give ‘em hell!”
“Kick Hillary’s ass!”
He’d landed several blocks away in a $7 million helicopter bearing his name. As he braved the sizzling midday heat, walking along in a navy blazer, khakis and shiny white spats, the chopper, still giving rides to groups of fawning children, swirled overhead.
Donald Trump, currently leading the polls for the Republican nomination and ready to spend $1 billion to win it all, was a long way from the gold-plated interior of New York City’s Trump Tower. But as a man who loves nothing more than to bask in the public’s adulation, he had come to the perfect place.
“My crowd is 10 times Hillary’s,” Trump gloated as he walked, having just been told the Democratic frontrunner, also campaigning at the fair Saturday, had taken note of his helicopter flying above...
One of the best things about Fiorina is she's an attractive and very feminine woman, unlike Hillary Clinton. Of course, being so articulate and knowledgeable on the issues doesn't hurt.
And you know, it's totally understandable. Might as well take a few lumps to the head rather than be fired for defending yourself. That's how fucked up we are right now, man.
On Friday, it was revealed that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi had repeatedly raped American relief worker Kayla Mueller while she was in captivity.
Mueller was kidnapped in Syria two years ago and would never get out alive. ISIS claimed she had been killed as a result of Jordanian bombing of ISIS positions in Syria, but this is a most dubious claim. While ISIS was eager to claim she did not die at their hands they were not so eager to say their leader is a sexual sadist.
Baghdadi is hardly the only ISIS leader to engage in such evil. ISIS often kidnaps women, particularly the Yazidis, and forces them into sexual slavery. Earlier this month, 19 brave women who refused to have sex with ISIS leaders were executed.
I don't ever want to hear Democrats accuse Republicans of engaging in a war on women because ISIS is conducting a real war on women. A war in which women are actually raped and murdered. Our energies should be spent fighting the real enemy.
SMYRNA – Confederate flags decorated about a dozen student vehicles at Stewarts Creek High Thursday, including one with the image of an assault rifle and the words “COME AND TAKE IT.”
Stewarts Creek High Principal Clark Harrell declined a formal interview about the flags, including the one with the gun image.
“We’re fine,” Clark said from the lobby of the school’s front office, referring other questions to Rutherford County Schools spokesman James Evans.
Displays of the Confederate flag have been an issue since an accused white gunman in June killed nine black worshipers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, the state where the Civil War started. The accused gunman was known to identify with the Confederate flag and express racists sentiments.
The South Carolina Legislature responded by removing a Confederate flag display from a memorial on its Capitol grounds.
Evans said the mother of an African-American student had complained about spotting a Confederate flag in the bed of a truck headed to the Stewarts Creek campus Wednesday.
“We explained to her that because of the First Amendment, students are allowed to express themselves as long as it’s not causing a disruption at school,” Evans said during a phone interview.
When it comes to the image of a rifle being on one of the flags, Evans said Board of Education attorney Jeff Reed will investigate what the district can do even though no direct threat was made.
“We obviously don’t like having the image of a gun posted on campus like that, and that’s one of the reasons he’s looking into seeing if we can remove it or not,” Evans said...
RUTHERFORD COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) – A local mother is upset because kids at her child’s school are allowed to fly Confederate flags on campus.
The mom, who would like to remain anonymous, contacted News 2 with concerns about her son’s safety at Stewarts Creek High School in Rutherford County.
She said her 14-year-old son, who is in ninth grade, came home this week and told her that kids were wearing Confederate flag T-shirts to class.
The mother said she saw them herself while dropping off her son Wednesday morning. She said she also noticed students flying Confederate flags in the back of their trucks.
“I felt sad and hurt when I saw that,” she told News 2.
The Confederate flag has remained a controversial symbol since the Civil War, and the mom said, “I just don’t think it should be in schools.”
While driving by Stewarts Creek High School, News 2 counted as many as three Confederate flags on vehicles in the parking lot. There were also some American flags being displayed.
One of the Confederate flags had the message “heritage not hate” printed on it.
Still, the mom says she sees the flag as a source of hate and is afraid for her son’s safety...
Obviously, it's a touchy situation as far as sensitivities go, but the school's handling it appropriately. Remember, it's a personal (private not public) display of the flag. That's protected speech. Folks are going to have to strike a balance. There's not too many radical goon leftist murderers like Dylann Roof out there.
(I'd note though, it must be shocking to folks like Stogie that this kid's not all proud of the Confederate flag, what, with all those Southern black crackers hoisting the heritage down there, y'all.)
A Vancouver woman is distressed after a drone appeared to be trying to capture images of her suntanning topless on her private balcony, sparking concerns about irresponsible drone use.
Kathryn Redford, 30, lives on the second floor of an eight-storey apartment near West 4th Avenue and Pine Street in the Kitsilano neighbourhood.
Her secluded balcony is shielded by a brick wall on one side and a large tree on the other side which allows only a “sliver” of sunlight into the otherwise private balcony.
There are no apartment buildings across the street from Redford, and the inside of the balcony is not visible from street level.
Redford was reading and suntanning topless on her balcony floor Wednesday around 2:30 p.m., as she’s done before, when she heard the “unmistakable” sound of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
A yellow quadcopter with a small flashing light appeared by her balcony, in the “sliver” of space between her building and the tree and hovered for about 10 seconds.
In shock, Redford covered herself with her book and watched as the UAV took off. As she gathered her things to retreat inside, the UAV re-appeared and this time, remained for about 30 seconds...
Well, I guess that does it for topless sunbathing in Vancouver!
It turns out the suspect was an activist with the South East Queens County Young Democrats, and was a community youth organizer on the East Coast. See his pages at Facebook and LinkedIn, as well the Facebook page for the Democrat club.
The bottom photo is said to show the suspect with former New York City Comptroller and Democratic Mayoral candidate John Liu.
Make sense. The Democrats Party is the party of far left-wing terrorism and #BlackLivesMatter violence and destruction.
"Intellectuals have always disdained commerce" says Whole Foods Market co-founder John Mackey. They "have always sided...with the aristocrats to maintain a society where the businesspeople were kind of kept down."
More than any other outlet, Whole Foods has reconfigured what and how America eats and the chain's commitment to high-quality meats, produce, cheeses, and wines is legendary. Since opening his first store in Austin, Texas in 1980, Mackey now oversees operations around the globe and continues to set the pace for what's expected in organic and sustainably raised and harvested food.
Because of Whole Foods' trendy customer base and because Mackey is himself a vegan and champions collaboration between management and workers, it's easy to mistake Mackey for a progressive left-winger. Indeed, an early version of Jonah Goldberg's best-selling 2008 book Liberal Fascism even bore the subtitle "The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton and The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods."
Yet nothing could be further from the truth—and more distorting of the radical vision of capitalism at the heart of Mackey's thought. A high-profile critic of the minimum wage, Obamacare, and the regulatory state, Mackey believes that free markets are the best way not only to raise living standards but also to explore new ways of building community and creating meaning for individuals and society. At the same time, he challenges all sorts of libertarian dogma, including the notion that publicly traded companies should always seek to exclusively maximize shareholder value (go here to read a 2005 Reason debate about the social responsibility of business featuring Mackey, Milton Friedman, and Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers). Conscious Capitalism, the book he co-authored with Rajendra Sisodia, lays out a detailed case for Mackey's vision of a post-industrial capitalism that addresses spiritual desire as much as physial need...
Mayor Bill de Blasio today refused to discuss his decision to stay at the gym for nearly two hours in the middle of a six-hour Staten Island stand-off in which a firefighter was shot twice by a man police have identified as a Bloods gang leader.
“We’re briefing you all on a very serious situation, and that’s just not a serious question,” Mr. de Blasio curtly replied during a press conference at a Staten Island police station when asked about his gym schedule.
The alleged shooter, Garland Tyree, was killed this afternoon, ending the stand-off that began at 6 a.m. when a task force of federal and NYPD officers tried to serve a federal warrant at the home in Staten Island’s Mariners Harbor neighborhood and were met with heavy smoke coming from under the door—which police now say was due to a smoke bomb they found in the home. Shortly after FDNY Lt. James Hayes entered the apartment to investigate the smoke, Tyree shot him twice in the lower extremities, officials said today during a press conference.
After hours of negotiations, Tyree said that after speaking to his mother—who police flew in on a department helicopter from Delaware—he would exit and surrender, police officials said today. But instead of exiting peacefully, Tyree fired shots from inside the apartment at department vehicles, and then exited while continuing to fire shots from a fully automatic AK-47, Mr. Bratton said. Officers returned fire and killed Tyree.
But despite calling the situation “very serious,” it apparently was not serious enough to interfere with Mr. de Blasio’s morning gym routine, which involves a drive from his Gracie Mansion home in Manhattan to the Park Slope YMCA in his old Brooklyn neighborhood. Mr. de Blasio’s ill-timed work-out was first reported by NY1’s Grace Rauh, who said it appeared the mayor was at the gym for two hours—or at least, his detail was: Mr. de Blasio left through a back door, possibly to avoid Ms. Rauh and her camera.
Mr. de Blasio’s spokeswoman Karen Hinton first said on Twitter that the mayor was at the gym for 80 minutes, then said on Twitter that he arrived at 9 a.m.—about three hours after the stand-off began and the firefighter had been shot—and left at 10:40 a.m, which amounts to 100 minutes. Ms. Hinton clarified that the mayor’s workout was 80 minutes, but he stayed at the gym to make phone calls.
“Mayor de Blasio was on calls with both Fire Commissioner Nigro and Police Commissioner Bratton about the situation on Staten Island throughout the morning, starting at 7 am, and he continued receiving multiple updates until he departed for Staten Island. This includes leaving the gym to make and take a series of calls from approximately 10:40 to 11:15, when he departed for Staten Island,” Ms. Hinton said in a statement. “The mayor has met with the wounded firefighter and his fellow firefighters at the hospital, and will soon update the media on both the situation on the ground in Staten Island and the wounded firefighter’s condition.”
During his press conference, the mayor spoke at length about his time with Mr. Hayes in the hospital, saying the firefighter was in good spirits and making light of his condition and calling him a “proud Staten Islander.” He heaped praise on first responders.
“It’s a day when they all handled their jobs in exemplary fashion. There’s a lot to be proud of today in the way our first responders handled something you just can’t be prepared for,” Mr. de Blasio said.
Before entering the apartment, Mr. Hayes spoke with Tyree about the smoke, Mr. Nigro said.
“Lt. Hayes was speaking with the occupant of the apartment and speaking quite calmly, and then suddenly [Tyree] stopped,” Mr. Nigro said, leaving Mr. Hayes concerned that Tyree may have succumbed to smoke. So Mr. Hayes entered the apartment to check on Tyree, Mr. Nigro said, and was then shot by him.
The incident comes as the mayor has struggled to overcome a growing perception of rising crime and disorder in the city, fueled in part by intense media coverage of homelessness and a 10 percent spike in homicides this summer. A recent Quinnipiac survey found that despite continued record low crime, most New Yorkers ranked quality of life the lowest since 1997. Earlier this summer Mr. de Blasio repeatedly noted that the rise in violent crime was largely isolated to gang disputes—but today’s shoot-out is an example of gang violence spilling beyond gang-member-on-gang-member assaults. Sources speaking to the Staten Island Advance described Tyree as the leader of the Bloods gang on the East Coast, and the paper noted his long rap sheet in the borough...
At the video below, from CBS, "An Associated Press report says an email discussing secret CIA drones was sent through Hillary Clinton's private, unsecured server while she was secretary of state. It was one of two messages with top secret information sent to Clinton. The FBI took possession of the server on Wednesday. Nancy Cordes reports from Washington, where the email controversy is stirring up the presidential race."
WASHINGTON (AP) — Neither of the two emails sent to Hillary Rodham Clinton now labeled by intelligence agencies as "top secret" contained information that would jump out to experts as particularly sensitive, according to several government officials.
One included a discussion of a U.S. drone strike, part of a covert program that is widely known and discussed. A second conversation could have improperly referred to highly classified material, but it also could have reflected information collected independently, U.S. officials who have reviewed the correspondence told The Associated Press.
Still, it's looking increasingly likely the issue of whether Clinton mishandled classified information on her home-brew email server will have significant political implications in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Clinton, who has been seen from the outset as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, agreed this week to turn over to the FBI the private server she used as secretary of state. And Republicans in Congress have seized on the involvement of federal law enforcement in the matter as a sign she was negligent in handling the nation's secrets.
On Monday, the inspector general for the 17 spy agencies that make up what is known as the intelligence community told Congress that two of 40 emails, in a random sample of 30,000 messages that Clinton gave the State Department for review, contained information deemed "Top Secret," one of the government's highest levels of classification.
While neither of the emails was marked classified at the time they were sent, they have since been slapped with a "TK" marking, for "Talent Keyhole," suggesting material obtained by spy satellites. And they also were marked "NOFORN," meaning information that can only be shared with Americans with security clearances.
The two emails got those markings after consultations with the CIA and other agencies where the material originated, officials said. Some officials said they believed the designations were a stretch — a knee-jerk move in a bureaucracy rife with over-classification.
The officials who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity work in intelligence and other agencies. They wouldn't detail the full contents of the emails because of ongoing questions about classification level.
Clinton didn't transmit the sensitive information herself, they said, and nothing in the emails she received makes direct reference to communications intercepts, confidential intelligence methods or any other form of sensitive sourcing.
The drone exchange, the officials said, begins with a copy of a news article about the CIA drone program that targets terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere. While that program is technically top secret, it is well-known and often reported on. Former CIA director Leon Panetta and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have openly discussed it.
The copy makes reference to classified information, and a Clinton adviser follows up by dancing around a top secret in a way that could possibly be inferred as confirmation, the officials said. Several people, however, described this claim as tenuous.
But a second email reviewed by Charles McCullough, the intelligence community inspector general, appears more problematic, officials said. Nothing in the message is "lifted" from classified documents, they said, though they differed on where the information in it was sourced. Some said it improperly points back to highly classified material, while others countered that it was a classic case of what the government calls "parallel reporting" — receiving information the government considers secret through "open source" channels.
The issue came to light Tuesday after Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said McCullough found four "highly classified" emails on the unusual private server that Clinton used while she was secretary of state...
Well, yeah, it might have an effect on the presidential race, heh.
Salon cheered on the rioters in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., accepting as gospel the idea that blacks like Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin were murdered by racist white people running wild. Black violence is routinely dismissed at Salon because it doesn't fit the Left's narrative. Black people are always victims and white people are always evildoers.
David Palumbo-Liu is just one of many Salon writers who spends his time emulating Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Like Farrakhan, Palumbo-Liu seems to embrace genocide against whites.
After two hard-left Democratic presidential candidates were booed at a radical left-wing activists' convention for not toeing the Black Lives Matter line, Palumbo-Liu castigated the politicians for daring to assert that all lives, not just black lives, matter, accusing them of belonging to an evil "cult." He attacked "the disgraceful performances of Mike [sic; read Martin] O’Malley and Bernie Sanders at last week’s Netroots Nation (#NN15) event in Phoenix."
After Black Alliance for Just Immigration national coordinator Tia Oso and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors occupied the stage where O'Malley was speaking, Cullors said she had to intervene. "We are in a state of emergency. If you do not feel that emergency, then you are not human." De-humanizing opponents is a tactic of a genocidal, totalitarian movement, not of those legitimately advocating for civil rights.
To this political stunt worthy of the Third Reich's Sturmabteilung, O'Malley responded in a restrained and perfectly decent way. He said "of course" black lives matter, just as white lives and “all lives matter.”
Palumbo-Liu rejects this line of thinking because it deviates from the now fashionable leftist view that black lives matter more, much more, than the lives of everyone else. O'Malley's sin lay in "effectively erasing the specific ways black lives in particular are targeted by both structural and informal racist violence in all shapes and forms."
My Instagram and Facebook feeds have been filled with unwitting apologists for racism against Korean-American small-business owners.
Heckuva job, Hollywood!
Here’s how the poison is spreading. A savvy marketing team at Universal/Comcast Corp. developed a web toy that allows social media fans to customize the theatrical poster logo for the media giant’s new biopic, “Straight Outta Compton.” Hundreds of thousands of clueless users have uploaded photos of themselves and substituted “Compton” with the names of their hometowns.
Jennifer Lopez, Serena Williams, LeBron James and Ed Sheeran are among the celebrities who helped make the meme go viral. Youth vote-pandering GOP Florida Sen. Marco Rubio jumped on the cultural bandwagon, too, with two obsequious messages on Twitter featuring the hashtag “#straightouttacompton.”
Update: And, of course, the celebrity dolt-in-chief’s administration used the meme to tweet about the Iran Deal.
It’s a publicity coup for rappers-turned-multimedia moguls Dr. Dre (Andre Young) and Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson) as they pimp the movie — named after their breakthrough 1988 album — glorifying the rise of their band N.W.A. (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) and the hardcore gangsta rap genre.
“Straight Outta Compton’s” cop-bashing, thug-promoting songs — most notably “F-k the Police” — vaulted Young and Jackson into the entertainment stratosphere. Young is a near-billionaire after becoming a producer, promoter and maker of overpriced headphones (the company was bought by Apple for $3 billion last year). Jackson embarked on a successful career as a solo rapper, mainstream actor and comedian.
Their hagiographic movie omits Young’s history of assaults on women and completely whitewashes Jackson’s incendiary attacks on Korean storeowners in South Central Los Angeles.
Shortly before the 1992 L.A. riots, Jackson had penned the hate-filled song “Black Korea” for his best-selling platinum solo album, Death Certificate. He seethed against law-abiding immigrant entrepreneurs in his ‘hood and threated to burn their stores “right down to a crisp”:
Every time I want to go get a f–king brew
I gotta go down to the store with the two
Oriental one-penny-counting mother–kers;
They make a nigger mad enough to cause a little ruckus.
Thinking every brother in the world’s out to take,
So they watch every damn move that I make.
They hope I don’t pull out a Gat, try to rob
Their funky little store, but, b-tch, I got a job.
So don’t follow me up and down your market
Or your little chop suey ass will be a target
Of a nationwide boycott.
Juice with the people, that’s what the boy got.
So pay respect to the black fist
Or we’ll burn your store right down to a crisp.
And then we’ll see ya…
‘Cause you can’t turn the ghetto into black Korea...
Then watch last night's ABC's Nightline interview with Ice Cube, where he claims he's a changed man on his earlier racism, 'That's not who I'm about ... I'm a black man ... you can't discriminate...'
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