As the [left's fascist] mob gleefully destroys people's lives, its members haven't stopped to ask themselves a basic question: What happens when they come for me? If history is any guide, that's how these things usually end.RTWT.
Is this just on college campuses, or is this something you see within the left as a whole?I think she badly underestimates leftist power off America's campuses. I mean, c'mon, the mainstream mass media is objectively leftist. Even outlets like ESPN are now pushing a Gramscian Marxian social ideology.
There is not that much of a left in America. Whenever you talk about the American left, a big part of their base is going to be on college campuses. … There's a specific part of the anti-liberal left that sees civil liberties and free speech ideas as secondary to social justice. You see expressions of it on Twitter, but it's mostly on college campuses.
Partly that's just because college campuses are really the only place where the left has any power to enforce its own agenda. In the broader world, there are probably leftists who want to shut up all kinds of people, but they have no ability do so. They have no power in American life. But they have power on college campuses...
‘This Is About Control & Conform’: @GlennBeck Slams #CommonCore http://t.co/NKFLb7Rtq9 @oreillyfactor
— FoxNewsInsider (@FoxNewsInsider) May 14, 2014Sensing a theme here. RT @TruthinAmEd North Dakota DPI Official Attacks Common Core Opponent - http://t.co/zUVPK9yHL3 #StopCommonCore
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) May 14, 2014Hi fellow "barbarian" parents - help #stopcommoncore in Arizona - support @_dianedouglas for state supe ==> http://t.co/Gt6nkBIsEn
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) May 14, 2014In which @ericallie demonstrates the utter uselessness of 'hashtag activism':
http://t.co/fvr90qOjfo … pic.twitter.com/cqj9Yi8Bp7
— Brian Cates (@drawandstrike) May 14, 2014ISTANBUL—Turkey's government on Wednesday raced to deal with the country's worst-ever mining catastrophe, as a mounting death toll sparked protests just three months before presidential elections.Keep reading.
The mine explosion and ensuing fire that have killed at least 274 people since Tuesday afternoon has served a new catalyst of public anger toward the government, which since June has been roiled by protests, corruption scandals and Internet bans.
Mounting deaths in Soma and workplace-safety issues pose a fresh challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has overseen the nearly quadrupling of Turkey's economy to $820 billion through overhauls, investments and privatizations since coming to power in 2002.
In the Aegean province of Manisa, rescue teams worked on Wednesday to evacuate about 100 people still underground at Soma Komur Isletmeleri AS's mine a day after the explosion trapped 787 workers. Local channels have broadcast wailing mothers mourning their sons' deaths, along with images of other people keeping a hopeful vigil. Separately, a collapse in the coal-mining center of Zonguldak on the Black Sea coast killed another worker on Wednesday...
Even though she will receive a lot of negative press for this, I thought she was completely composed during the debate and handled herself well while expressing her opinion. I don’t post this to mock her, but rather to illustrate how sensitive this topic has become.Hmm, that's not what the homosexuals fascists are going to say, but yeah.
It had been two weeks since recordings surfaced of the Clippers owner telling his 31-year-old companion, V. Stiviano, that though she could spend time with African Americans, she should not allow herself to be photographed with them. Those comments earned Sterling a lifetime ban from the NBA and a $2.5-million fine — but it wasn't until Sterling finally broke his silence, and attempted to defend himself, that Los Angeles' jaw landed on the floor with a unified, collective thud.Also, "Magic Johnson defends himself against Sterling's broadsides."
In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, which aired in full on Monday, Sterling insisted that he could hold on to the team he has owned for 33 years, said fans and sponsors remained in his corner and blamed the media for his troubles. Then Sterling turned to a familiar face and an improbable foil: Johnson, the former Lakers superstar, part of the Los Angeles Dodgers ownership team and one of the most beloved figures in California sports history.
Today's news media are largely ignoring the IRS scandal, and it is impossible to have confidence in the current investigations by the FBI, Justice Department, and House committee. I am not suggesting that the current scandal in the end will rise to the level of Watergate. But the allegations are serious, and fair-minded Americans of both parties should agree that a thorough investigation needs to be undertaken to either debunk them or confirm them.RTWT.
Step one should be to give Lois Lerner full immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony. And then let the chips fall where they may.
So how do we deal with this idiocy?Classic.
The proper response to the privilege gambit is laughter. The super-serious zealots of progressivism hate being laughed at, but there’s really no other appropriate response outside of a stream of obscenities. The privilege game is designed to circumvent arguments based on reason and facts and evidence, so the way to win it is to defeat it on its own terms.
Call: “Check your privilege!”
Response: “What you call ‘privilege’ is just me being better than you.”
They won’t like it. It will make them angry. Good. Because tactics like “Check your privilege” are designed to make us angry, to put us off-balance, to baffle us and suck us down into a rabbit hole of leftist jargon and progressive stupidity.
Don’t follow them. Mock them. Accuse them of adhering to a transphobic cisnormative paradigm and start shrieking “Hate crime!”
Don’t worry about not making sense. They’re college students. They are used to not understanding what people smarter than they are tell them.
Respectful argument should be reserved for those who respect the concept of argument. The sulky sophomores who babble about privilege do not. They only understand power. And we give them power when we give their nonsense the respect we would give a coherent argument.
They deserve only laughter. And to laugh at them, we simply need to refuse to be intimidated...
The liberal hubris is that government can do anything to change the earth's climate or prevent the next big hurricane, earthquake or monsoon. These are the people in Washington who can't run a website, can't deliver the mail and can't balance a budget. But they are going to prevent droughts and forest fires.RTWT.
The President's doomsday claims last week served mostly to undermine the alarmists' case for radical action on climate change. Truth always seems to be the first casualty in this debate.
This is the tactic of tyrants. Americans are wise to be wary about giving up our basic freedoms and lowering our standard of living to combat an exaggerated crisis.
LONG BEACH - Suspensions at Beach High School have been cut in half from last school year to the present. But not everyone on the campus of the alternative school, designed for students who need to recover class credits, sees this as a positive development.I'm sure it's totally out of control.
Students at Beach High, located on the same grounds as Long Beach Adult School in the 3700 block of Willow Street, are routinely let off the hook for misdeeds such as fighting, cursing at staff members, leaving campus and substance abuse, according to some community members and employees of the district.
“There are excessive fights,” said math teacher Ronnie Roberts. “Drug use on campus is rampant.”
Roberts said that the same students are allowed to misbehave at the school, which opened in 2011, with few to no consequences.
“Verbal assaults upon school personnel are the rule here, rather than the exception,” he said.
The African-American math teacher said that most of the youth at Beach, which has a student body of nearly 290, are low-income Latinos, blacks and Asian-Americans with gang ties.
“All have been literally kicked out of the large, comprehensive high schools, and are credit deficient, have poor attendance, and have extreme discipline issues, some obviously of a criminal nature,” he said.
Roberts added that these students need “no-nonsense leadership skills” but described Beach High Principal Matt Saldana as a “classic enabler.” Roberts said Saldana “means well but is a poor fit for this type of student and thusly, we are all in danger.”
Roberts has complained about the principal and discipline at Beach High to district officials, but he said his concerns have largely gone ignored.
Another faculty member at Beach, who asked not to be named, raised similar concerns about the school’s leadership. She said that the rules are applied inconsistently and unevenly, and both the staff and the students recognize the problem, which has created division in the school community. Students and staff members are fragmented, the faculty member said.
Saldana, who reported a 50 percent drop in suspensions from last school year to the current one, disagrees with the characterization of his school and of himself. He said the negative depiction of Beach is the view of one or two “disgruntled” teachers. “Generally speaking, this is actually a great place to work if you like dealing with at-risk kids,” he said.
Saldana, who has led the school since it opened, said the staff works hard to help Beach students improve their behavior and get on track to graduate.
Last fall, the Long Beach Unified school board implemented a policy known as restorative justice that requires schools to explore nonpunitive alternatives before suspending students. Beach High students have access to counseling services, gang intervention specialists and more, according to Saldana. But he does suspend students or remove them from school if they are repeat offenders.
“Just last week, I referred four students to alternative schools,” Saldana said. “We suspend kids who bring weapons to school. They are also sometimes arrested. In relation to drugs and alcohol, sometimes they are suspended. Sometimes they are removed from school. Sometimes counseling services are offered.”
Montalva Hill, the parent of a 10th grader at Beach, said that she’s not impressed with how the school disciplines students. Hill said that her daughter, who’s been suspended previously for fighting, has been bullied, harassed and physically attacked by a group of girls she fell out with last fall. Beach administrators and district officials, however, have neglected to pursue a resolution, according to Hill.
“They see things happening and they don’t intervene right away,” she said. “There’s no preventive measures.”
The head of the International Monetary Fund on Monday joined an elite group—those whose plans to give commencement addresses this graduation season were derailed by student or faculty protests.Actually, students and parents opposed the First Lady's speech because it was going to detract from the kids' celebrations, not because they opposed her politically. Indeed, the students themselves said the loved the First Lady.
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, was scheduled to speak this coming Sunday at Smith College, but she withdrew her name after nearly 500 people signed a petition objecting to the policies of the IMF. Similar outcries foiled speaking engagements by former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at Rutgers University and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis University, among several others.
"I call it disinvitation season," said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a free-speech advocacy group. "Not everyone gets disinvited, but there is such consistent effort to get rid of people."
Mr. Lukianoff said the trend is clearly growing. According to a tally by his group, between 1987 and 2008, there were 48 protests of planned speeches, not all for graduations, that led to 21 incidents of an invited guest not speaking. Since 2009 there have been 95 protests, resulting in 39 cancellations, according to Mr. Lukianoff's group.
Earlier this month at Rutgers, students and faculty protested Ms. Rice's involvement in the Iraq war, prompting her to pull out of her scheduled address at the New Jersey school. In April, Brandeis withdrew an honorary degree for Ms. Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch lawmaker who has spoken out forcefully against Islam. At Haverford College, the commencement selection of Robert J. Birgeneau, a former university administrator at Berkeley, also has drawn fire.
"There are serious implications for what is going on here; universities are becoming havens of the closed minded," said Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which says it promotes academic standards and accountability. "What we are beginning to see is a heckler's veto."
Rudy Fichtenbaum, president of the American Association of University Professors, defended the rights of students and faculty to protest, petition and otherwise make their voices heard.
"There's a long history of protests in the United States; that's what we were founded on, and I think student protests are partially an introduction to democracy," Mr. Fichtenbaum said.
The disputes can put schools in a difficult spot. At Brandeis, officials found much to laud in Ms. Hirsi Ali before withdrawing her honorary degree, citing "certain of her past statements that are inconsistent" with the school's values.
The controversies haven't been limited to colleges. Last month, the White House said Michelle Obama would deliver the commencement address to graduating seniors in the Topeka, Kan., school district. But after parents complained about limited seating for family and friends and about the first lady's distracting from the celebration of seniors, the plan was retooled. Mrs. Obama now is scheduled to speak a day earlier—this coming Friday—at a "senior recognition day" in Topeka.
Protesting commencement speakers isn't entirely new. In 1987, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, withdrew from delivering the commencement address at Lafayette College, where she also was to get an honorary degree. In 1993, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell weathered activists' ire and delivered Harvard University's graduation speech...
