That the missiles are callled tomahawks must enrage a lot of Native Americans
— Clara Jeffery (@ClaraJeffery) April 8, 2017
In 1972, when I was 10 years old, my father’s job was transferred from Buffalo, New York, to California. After endless cold Buffalo winters, the golden state seemed like a golden place, a land of golden opportunity. My parents built a house, my father built a successful career, and my brothers and I thrived.Keep reading.
That was then, this is now. California is going off the deep end. The gold has turned to brass. It has become the land of fruits and nuts, a caricature of its former glory, a place people seek to leave in droves before they run afoul of the latest insanity.
Consider just a few examples of recent lunacy:
* Public university to host talk on animal-based sex fetishesPerhaps unsurprisingly, middle class Californians are leaving the state in droves. Take a look at these words from a frustrated inhabitant:
* Claim: Trump ‘threatens mental health of young Californians’
* They’ll have a ‘gay’ old time: ‘Bordellos’ now in nursing homes?
* California just passed a law regulating cow farts
* New bill would criminalize pronoun usage in nursing homes
* California bans students from traveling to ‘anti-LGBT’ states
Came to SoCal as a kid in 1969 … got married and had kids who now are in college (out of state). I worked my *** off to get where I am today, but my house goes on the market this spring. I’ve watched this state sink into the abyss of liberal insanity inch by inch, drop by drop.
There is no hope for the state of Kalifornia. The Dems and their insane view of this world have a super majority in the Senate and Assembly. Combined with a Dem governor, there is nothing they cannot get passed. Even the Republicans who end up getting into the minority party are squishy and put up little resistance.
This past summer the legislative branch passed a bunch of bills that finally broke my desire to stay here with my salary. Gov. Moonbeam signed into law a bill that forces the cattle industry (dairy and meat) into providing flatulent catching backpacks for all cows to wear, for their precious global warming efforts. He also signed a bill that permits early release of felons out of jail and has them live amongst the citizenry. Combine that with the draconian laws further limiting my Second Amendment rights by making ammunition costly and more difficult to obtain, making some of my firearms illegal to own, he has put more rights into criminals and made my family less safe to live here.
I am DONE. Good riddance. I am moving to a state that will appreciate my conservative, constitutional values.
This person’s lament echoes that of over a million (mostly middle-class) people who have departed California in recent decades. We were among them. My husband and I shook the California dust off our feet in 1992 and never looked back at that once-beautiful state.
But it’s not just California. Recent articles show a massive exodus from both New York City and Chicago as well.
What do these three locations (California, New York, Chicago) have in common? They are bastions of liberalism, cauldrons of experimental progressive policies, vanguards of whatever feel-good fiscally irresponsible nonsense disturbed minds can think up.
So when we read about populations draining out of certain locations, the conclusion is obvious. People aren’t fleeing New York or Chicago or California; people are fleeing liberalism. The festering cauldron of progressive thought ultimately makes places unlivable.
I’m honestly sorry for those freedom-loving conservatives who are unable (due to work or family commitments) to beat feet and flee the gold-plated state. And I welcome those honestly looking to escape the insidious poison. I do, however, bear a grudge with those who bring their poison with them and enthusiastically spread it to a new location, dragging everything down with them.
K. T. McFarland has been asked to step down as deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump after less than three months and is expected to be nominated as ambassador to Singapore, according to a person familiar with White House personnel moves.More (via Memeorandum).
The departure of the 65-year-old former Fox News commentator comes as Trump’s second National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, puts his own stamp on the National Security Council after taking over in February from retired General Michael Flynn.
McFarland proved not to be a good fit at the NSC, the person said, adding that Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was involved in the decision as well.
Her removal follows a reorganization of the NSC in the past week that removed Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor, from the principals committee, the Cabinet-level interagency forum that advises the president on pressing security matters.
Other officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were brought back onto the committee as “regular attendees,” reversing a move made in January. The changes were outlined in a presidential memorandum dated April 4.
Former Goldman Sachs executive Dina Powell stays on as another deputy national security adviser, and a second person is expected to be named to a similar role to replace McFarland...
President Trump faced his first serious foreign-policy test this week. To the surprise and perhaps frustration of his critics, he passed with flying colors.Keep reading.
In the first place, the president read the situation correctly. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s horrific and illegal use of chemical weapons against civilians was not merely an affront to international norms. It was a probe by Mr. Assad and his patrons to test the mettle of the new White House.
This must have looked like a good week to challenge Washington. The Trump administration is beset by critics. Most senior national-security posts remain unfilled. The White House is torn by infighting. The Republican Party is divided by the bitter primary campaign and its recent health-care fiasco.
President Trump concluded, correctly, that failing to respond effectively to Mr. Assad’s challenge would invite more probes and more tests. He moved quickly and decisively against the provocation, demonstrating that the days of strategic dithering are gone.
Second, Mr. Trump chose the right response: a limited missile strike against the Syrian air base that, according to American intelligence, had launched the vicious gas attack. This resonated well nearly everywhere. At home, it won approval from Jacksonians and others who want a strong president. The strikes vindicated America’s prestige and dealt a clear setback to those who seek to humiliate or marginalize the U.S. But no ground troops were involved and Mr. Trump made no move toward long-term counterinsurgency or nation-building, the type of campaign that many Americans, his base in particular, have learned to view skeptically.
Internationally, the strike was also popular. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, putting awkward phone calls behind him, spoke up forthrightly in Mr. Trump’s support. So did Canada’s Justin Trudeau, not usually considered a member of the Trump Fan Club, and Germany’s foreign minister, a Social Democrat whose party has been among the most critical of past American military action.
The strike reassured nervous allies, hungry for leadership but concerned about Mr. Trump’s temperament, that he is capable of a measured response intended to support a vital principle of international law. Friends of the U.S. will sweat less, and opponents will sweat more. That is a good thing.
Third, Mr. Trump handled the process well. Congress was briefed but not asked for approval, a decision inside the long-established norms that govern military action by American commanders in chief. Engaging in a war to overthrow Mr. Assad would be another matter, but so far Mr. Trump has stayed well within the mainstream of American presidents dating back to the 18th century.
The Trump administration notified Russia before the U.S. bombed the Syrian airfield. This is a process of its own. If this were the start of a long war, we wouldn’t give our adversaries advance warning about the opening salvo. However, by telling Moscow we were about to strike, the administration was signaling that the engagement would be limited, and the Russians could therefore temper their response. By using cruise missiles, the administration also guaranteed that the action would be impossible to prevent.
Finally, Mr. Trump gets extra points for deftness...
Harvard is writing "the Puritans" out of its alma mater, seeking to make it more inclusive https://t.co/DnjVcJN6aV— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 8, 2017
For decades, Harvard students and alumni have sung an alma mater that calls on them to be heralds of light and bearers of love “till the stock of the Puritans die.”More.
University officials teach the refrain to freshmen on arrival and sing it again when the students graduate years later.
But this week, a university steeped in tradition said the time had come for a change.
To affirm Harvard’s commitment to inclusion in a time when college campuses are routinely finding themselves at the center of national debates on race and identity, university officials said they are seeking suggested rewrites of that disquieting final line. The contest is open only to members of the Harvard community.
The line about Puritans concludes a sentence that is “an exhortation to pursue the truth until a certain endpoint,” said Danielle S. Allen, a professor and political philosopher on the Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, which launched the competition.
Harvard’s motto is “Veritas,” Latin for “truth,” she noted, adding, “there shouldn’t be any endpoint to the pursuit of truth, nor should we imply that the pursuit of truth is for any particular ethnic group.”
Today, minority admittees and presiding administrations eagerly lobby for fundamentally changing the composition, constituency, and even the complexion of those schools. Matters have reached a point at which the non-traditional groups feel entitled to rename buildings and to purge references and memorials to illustrious alumni and benefactors on the basis of their own amour propre. Now, at Harvard, they are sending the founders and original constituency of the college into exile from the school’s alma mater. All this causes me to wonder: had the people who initiated the effort at diversity admissions been able to foresee this occurring, would they ever have admitted any of these minorities at all in the first place?RTWT.
In the time you spend on social media each year, you could read 200 books https://t.co/ClGlaPiWr2
— Quartz (@qz) April 6, 2017
I guess Trump wasn't "Putin's puppet" after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet.
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) April 7, 2017
I'm officially OFF the Trump train.
“What Trump did was nothing less than a betrayal" https://t.co/gQWa3dA3om
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) April 7, 2017
Alt-right turns on "neo-con puppet" Trump after bombing Syria https://t.co/FhhfcUJQUC pic.twitter.com/OHzmtjwFd3
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) April 7, 2017
"I'm officially OFF the Trump train." Trump's far-right supporters turn on him after the Syria missile strike. https://t.co/CRIDWz4PgB
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 7, 2017
Eli Lake from Bloomberg set off a firestorm in the US this week with his revelation on Monday that in the last six months of the Obama administration, Susan Rice, former president Barack Obama’s national security adviser, requested that the US intelligence community enable her to use foreign intelligence collection as a means of gathering information about Donald Trump’s advisers.Still more.
According to Lake’s story, during the course of the US presidential campaign, and with steadily rising intensity after President Donald Trump won the November 2016 election, Rice used her access to intercepted communications of foreign intelligence targets to gather information on Trump’s advisers. Some of those reports were then leaked, injuriously, to the media in violation of US criminal statute.
Whereas in the normal course of events, the identities of American citizens whose conversations with foreigners are intercepted by the US intelligence community are shielded, in the final months of the Obama administration, Rice repeatedly – on “dozens of occasions” – asked that the identities of Americans who conversed with foreigners be exposed.
The Americans in question were Trump’s advisers.
Lake’s scoop both confirmed and expanded House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes’s charges from two weeks ago against the Obama White House. Nunes said that he had seen evidence that the Obama administration collected information on incoming Trump administration officials that had no intelligence value. In other words, Nunes alleged that the data gathering was not for national security purposes.
This week’s discovery that Rice played a central role in the intelligence collection regarding Trump’s advisers brings Nunes’s allegations that the outgoing Obama administration conducted surveillance of the Trump team to the highest reaches of the administration. Now that Rice has been exposed, it is impossible to claim that in the event such surveillance occurred, it did not reflect the Obama administration’s concerted policy.
With the exceptions of Obama and his top adviser and confidante Valerie Jarrett, Rice was the top official in the White House.
Lake’s story and subsequent stories have obvious implications for the public’s assessment of Trump’s March 4 allegation on Twitter that Obama spied on him. But the Rice story is equally, if not more, important for what it teaches us about Obama’s mode of governing.
The Rice story strengthens the assessment that for eight years, Obama and his associates weaponized the federal government to wage a political war against their domestic political opponents in a manner that is simply unprecedented...
Je Suis Ivanka's Petty Neighbor pic.twitter.com/u3ymnvW31F
— Mitchell Sunderland (@mitchsunderland) April 3, 2017
