It's Time to Rally Around Donald Trump

From Diana West, at Big Government (via Memeorandum):

Brent Bozell has called on conservatives to rally around Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97%
 for the Republican presidential nomination. Ted Cruz is a good man and a fine candidate — my own second choice — but I believe GOP frontrunner Donald Trump is the candidate for American patriots to rally around.

Bozell states that Cruz is the one candidate who will return the United States to “her Constitutional foundations and Judeo-Christian values,” explaining:

On every issue of crucial importance to conservatives—defunding Planned Parenthood, ending the Obamacare nightmare, reducing the size of government, opposing amnesty—Cruz is not only with conservatives, he’s led the fight for conservatives.

To be honest, if these were the only issues under discussion in this GOP presidential primary season I would hardly be able to make myself pay attention. It’s not that they are unimportant issues. Personally, I support every one of them. But they are not existential issues. They are not the issues on which the very future of the Republic hangs. They are issues that a responsible Republican House and Senate, if they were loyal to their oath and to their constituents, could today begin to rectify all by themselves.

If they did — or if, say, a President Cruz were to ensure that Planned Parenthood was defunded, Obamacare ended, government trimmed, and amnesty once again staved off for another election cycle — we would all rejoice. However, the Constitution, the Republic, would be no more secure. On the contrary, they would still teeter on the edge of extinction, lost in a demographic, political, and cultural transformation that our fathers, founding and otherwise, would find inconceivable — and particularly if they ever found out that the crisis took hold when We the People lost our nerve even to talk about immigration and Islam.

It is in this danger zone of lost nerve and the vanishing nation-state where the extraordinary presidential candidacy of Donald Trump began. Like the nation-state itself, it started with the concept of a border, when Donald Trump told us he wanted to build a wall. Circa 21st-century-America, that took a lot of nerve.

After all, Americans don’t have walls. We don’t even have a border. We have “border surges,” and “unaccompanied alien minors.” We have “sanctuary cities,” and a continuous government raid on our own pocketbooks to pay for what amounts to our own invasion. That’s not even counting the attendant pathologies, burdens, and immeasurable cultural dislocation that comes about when “no one speaks English anymore.” A wall, the man says?

The enthusiasm real people (as opposed to media and #GOPSmartSet) have shown for Trump and his paradigm-shattering wall is something new and exciting on the political scene. So is the “yuge” sigh of relief. Someone sees the nation bleeding out and wants to stanch the flow. Yes, we can (build a wall). From that day forward, it has been Trump, dominating the GOP primary process and setting all of the potentially restorative points of the agenda, compelling the other candidates to address them, and the MSM, too. Blasting through hard, dense layers of “political correctness” with plain talk that shocks, Trump has set in motion very rusty wheels of reality-based thinking, beginning a long-overdue honest-to-goodness public debate about the future of America — or, better, whether there will be a future for America. That debate starts at the border, too.

A well-defended border is an obvious requisite for any nation-state. It bears noting, however, that before Donald Trump, not one commander in chief, and (aside from former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-CO), not one figure of national fame and repute I can think of had ever put it to the people of this land that a wall was a way to stop our border crisis: the unceasing flow into the nation of illegal masses of mainly Spanish-speaking aliens, among them terrorists, criminals (yes, including rapists and murderers) and transnational gangs. On the contrary, crime and chaos at the U.S. non-border are what every branch and bureaucracy of our government expect We, the People to accept as normal — and pay for as good citizens.

But good citizens of what — the world?

For many decades, the unspoken answer  to this inconceivable question (inconceivable, that is, before Trump) has been yes. “We Are the World” has been the USA’s unofficial anthem, the political muzak of our times that we either hum along to, or accept in teeth-gritted silence for fear of censure (or cancelled party invitations). “Openness,” “multiculturalism,” “globalism” — all have been pounded into us for so long that I think Americans despaired of ever hearing anyone give voice again to a patriotic vision of American interests. Then Trump came along and changed the tune. Americans perked up their ears. Maybe a wall — which is just the beginning of Trump’s detailed immigration policy, which Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)80%
 calls “exactly the plan America needs” — would make America possible again. That would be great, indeed.

Does Trump see it all this way, or is he going on “feel”? I don’t claim to know, although by this time in the political season, I think I am beginning to get a sense of Trump. When it comes to what is important, beginning with immigration, Trump’s instincts are as formidable as his courage. Notwithstanding Cruz and his consistent conservatism (in which Bozell places great stock), immigration wouldn’t even be a campaign issue without Donald Trump. In my opinion, the Trump plan is absoutely essential to any possible return, as Bozell puts it, to America’s constitutional foundations and Judeo-Christian principles. I actually think of it as our last shot...

Still more.

Phyllis Schlafly also argue's that Trump's the last hope for America.

Boy, conservatives have a bleak view of our prospects. You can understand why.

BONUS: "The Political Establishment's Terrified by Donald Trump's 'Tangible American Nationalism'."

Riot Ideology

From Fred Siegel, at the O.C. Register, "New riot ideology: Results through coercion":

In the summer of 1966, Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach warned that there would be riots by angry, poor minority residents in “30 or 40” American cities if Congress didn’t pass President Lyndon Johnson’s Model Cities antipoverty legislation. In the late 1960s, New York Mayor John Lindsay used the fear of such rioting to expand welfare rolls dramatically at a time when the black male unemployment rate was about 4 percent. And in the 1980s, Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry articulated an explicitly racial version of collective bargaining – a threat that, without ample federal funds, urban activists would unleash wave after wave of racial violence.

“I know for a fact,” Barry explained, “that white people get scared of the [Black] Panthers, and they might give money to somebody a little more moderate.”

This brand of thinking, which I call the riot ideology, influenced urban politics for a generation. Perhaps its model city was Baltimore, which was consumed in 1968 by race riots so intense that the Baltimore police, 500 Maryland state troopers and 6,000 National Guardsmen were unable to quell them. The “insurrection” was halted only when nearly 5,000 federal troops requested by Maryland Gov. Spiro Agnew arrived.

Since 1968, Baltimore has proved remarkably adept at procuring state and federal funds, but never really recovered from the riots. And the lawlessness never fully subsided. What began as a grand bargain to avert further racial violence after 1968 descended over the decades into a series of squalid shakedowns. Antipoverty programs that had once promised to repair social and family breakdown became by the 1990s self-justifying and self-perpetuating.

In the wake of the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 2015 West Baltimore riots, a new riot ideology has taken hold, one similarly intoxicated with violence and willing to excuse it, but with a different goal. The first version of the riot ideology assumed that not only cities, but also whites could be reformed; the new version assumes that America is inherently racist beyond redemption and that the black inner city needs to segregate itself from the larger society.

The West Baltimore rioters of 2015 didn’t call for more LBJ-style antipoverty projects, but for less policing. In a “keep off our turf” version of belligerent multiculturalism, the rioters see police as both to blame for black criminality and as an embodiment of bourgeois white values. The old riot ideology referred to mostly white urban police forces as occupying armies; the new version sees even Baltimore’s integrated police force, under the leadership of a black mayor and (until recently) a black police chief, as an occupying army. Withdrawing the police from black neighborhoods is the only acceptable solution.

This new racial politics is not only coalescing around activists claiming to speak for urban blacks – represented publicly by groups like Black Lives Matter – but also is expressed in the writings of best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates. And Baltimore is once again center stage...

More.

The long version is at City Journal, "The Riot Ideology, Reborn."

'Son of Saul'

I saw 'Son of Saul' yesterday at the Nuart Theater, in West L.A.

Saul is a sonderkommando at Auschwitz. He's among the trustee prisoners who prepare and clean the gas chambers, removing the bodies and sending them to the ovens, and then shoveling and disposing of the ashes. It's of course the most hellish, unimaginable setting you could think of, and that's part of the captivation of this film. It's shot with a super truncated, up-close focus, primarily on Saul, with the background very blurred, and images often fleeting, which is designed to foster the imagination of the viewer. I'd prefer a little more realism myself, although the method is indeed effective. The film's also fast-paced and the action seemingly busy all the time. Saul is to a point dehumanized by it. But he comes across a boy who just having been murdered, is being prepared for burning. Saul wants to save him. He wants to give him a decent burial, with the Kaddish from a rabbi. He takes the boy as his own son. That becomes his all-encompassing quest, all the time surrounded by the wheels of industrial-scale death. Again, that's what makes the movie riveting.

In any case, I first learned of the film from Joe Morgenstern's review at the Wall Street Journal, "‘Son of Saul’ Review: From Holocaust Hell, Piercing Art." (And see, "‘Son of Saul’: Not About the Survivors.")

Also good is Kenneth Turan, at the Los Angeles Times, "Review: Set in Nazi death camps, 'Son of Saul' is a powerful, immersive vision of hell."

And see an interview with the director László Nemes, from earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival, at France 24, "'Son of Saul' makes waves at Cannes."

The official trailer is here.

Leftists and Their Media Lackeys Have Launched Campaign to Deny the 'Ferguson Effect'

From Heather Mac Donald, at WSJ, "Trying to Hide the Rise of Violent Crime":

Murders and shootings have spiked in many American cities—and so have efforts to ignore or deny the crime increase. The see-no-evil campaign eagerly embraced a report last month by the Brennan Center for Justice called “Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis.” Many progressives and their media allies hailed the report as a refutation of what I and others have dubbed the “Ferguson effect”— cops backing off from proactive policing, demoralized by the ugly vitriol directed at them since a police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last year. Americans are being asked to disbelieve both the Ferguson effect and its result: violent crime flourishing in the ensuing vacuum.

In fact, the Brennan Center’s report confirms the Ferguson effect, while also showing how clueless the media are about crime and policing.

The Brennan researchers gathered homicide data from 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities for the period Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 1, 2015. (Not included were San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, El Paso and Nashville.) The researchers then tried to estimate what 2015’s full-year homicide numbers for those 25 cities would be, based on the extent to which homicides were up from January to October this year compared with the similar period in 2014.

The resulting projected increase for homicides in 2015 in those 25 cities is 11%. (By point of comparison, the FiveThirtyEight data blog looked at the 60 largest cities and found a 16% increase in homicides by September 2015.) An 11% one-year increase in any crime category is massive; an equivalent decrease in homicides would be greeted with high-fives by politicians and police chiefs. Yet the media have tried to repackage that 11% homicide increase as trivial.

Several strategies are employed to play down the jump in homicides. The simplest is to hide the actual figure. An Atlantic magazine article in November, “Debunking the Ferguson Effect,” reports: “Based on their data, the Brennan Center projects that homicides will rise slightly overall from 2014 to 2015.” A reader could be forgiven for thinking that “slightly” means an increase of, say, 2%. Nothing in the Atlantic write-up disabuses the reader of that mistaken impression. The website Vox, declaring the crime increase “bunk,” is similarly discreet about the actual homicide rate, leaving it to the reader’s imagination. Crime & Justice News, published by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, coyly admits that “murder is up moderately in some places” without disclosing what that “moderate” increase may be.

A second strategy for brushing off the homicide surge is to contextualize it over a long period. Because homicides haven’t returned to their appalling early 1990s or early 2000s levels, the current crime increase is insignificant, the Brennan Center and its media supporters suggest, echoing an argument that arose immediately after I first documented the Ferguson effect nationally.

“Today’s murder rates are still at all-time historic lows,” write the Brennan researchers. “In 1990 there were 29.3 murders per 100,000 residents in these cities. In 2000, there were 13.8 murders per 100,000. Now, there are 9.9 murders per 100,000 residents. Averaged across the cities, we find that while Americans in urban areas have experienced more murders this year than last year, they are safer than they were five years ago and much safer than they were 25 years ago.”

The Atlantic is similarly reassuring about today’s homicide rate: “The relative uptick”—which, again, the magazine never specifies—“is still small compared with the massive two-decade drop that preceded it.” True enough, though irrelevant—good policing over the past two decades produced an extraordinary 50% drop in crime. America isn’t going to give all that back in one year. The relevant question: What is the current trend? If this year’s homicide and shooting outbreak continues, those 1990s violent crime levels will return sooner than anyone could have imagined.

The most desperate tactic for discounting the homicide increase is to disaggregate the average. “Fears of ‘a new nationwide crime wave’ are premature at best and wildly misleading at worst,” asserts the Atlantic, because the “numbers make clear that violent crime is up in some major U.S. cities and down in others.”

But such variance is inherent in any average. If there weren’t variation across the members of a set, no average would be needed. Any national crime increase or decrease will have counterexamples of the dominant trend within it, yet policy makers and analysts rightly find the average meaningful. The Ferguson effect’s existence does not require that every city experience depolicing and a resulting crime increase. Enough cities—in particular, those with significant black populations and where antipolice agitation has been most strident—are experiencing murder increases that cannot be ignored.

Baltimore’s per capita homicide rate, for example, is now the highest in its history, according to the Baltimore Sun: 54 homicides per 100,000 residents, beating its 1993 rate of 48.8 per 100,000 residents. Shootings in Cincinnati, lethal and not, were up 30% by mid-September 2015 compared with the same period in 2014. Homicides in St. Louis were up 60% by the end of August. In Los Angeles, the police department reports that violent crime has increased 20% as of Dec. 5; there were 16% more shooting victims in the city, while arrests were down 9.5%. Shooting incidents in Chicago are up 17% through Dec. 13...

Still more.

And see, "America's Legal Order Begins to Fray — #FergusonEffect."

Islamic State Fighters Flee Ramadi (VIDEO)

At the Wall Street Journal, "Islamic State Militants Flee Ramadi Stronghold Amid Iraqi Offensive":

BAGHDAD—Islamic State fighters fled their last bastion in the center of Ramadi Sunday night as Iraqi security forces encircled the area and prepared a final push to clear out any remaining fighters or explosives, Iraqi officials said.

State television beamed images of people celebrating in streets across the country, though the army had not yet declared Ramadi completely under its control. A number of Iraqi leaders said they were confident the city would fall within days, if not hours.

A defeat in the capital of Anbar province, which is just 60 miles from the capital Baghdad, would be Islamic State’s third major loss in as many months to Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitary groups. Those forces retook the oil refining town of Beiji in October and in November, Iraqi Kurdish forces drove the Sunni Muslim extremist group out of the strategic city of Sinjar.

A decisive victory in Sunni-majority Ramadi could strengthen national unity and soothe sectarian conflict in the Shiite-dominated country where Sunnis often complain of discrimination. It would also augur well for the coming battle to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and Islamic State’s main stronghold in Iraq.

“My eyes are filled with tears now upon hearing that security forces managed to defeat Daesh in Ramadi,” said Sheikh Ghazi al-Goud, a member of parliament from Anbar province, using another name for Islamic State. “This is a victory for all Iraqis. Iraqis proved through the Ramadi fight that they are united, Sunnis and Shiite.”

One reason for the Ramadi operation’s slow progress has been the Iraqi government’s reluctance to include Iran-backed Shiite militia groups who have so far carried most of the fight against Islamic State. Moderate Iraqi leaders and U.S. officials worried that deploying the Shiite-majority militias to Ramadi could spark further sectarian strain, or lead some Sunni civilians to fight with Islamic State.

Iraqi troops, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, have spent nearly three weeks fighting their way into Ramadi.

By late Sunday, Islamic State militants were fleeing Ramadi’s eastern suburbs along with their families and civilian hostages they had been using as human shields, a security official said.

Their departure came after Iraqi security forces encircled the city center and began pushing into a former government compound that had been the group’s last bastion in the city. Iraq’s military said they had occupied only one building in the government compound, a blood bank owned by Iraq’s ministry of health.

Iraqi troops picked their way through cratered city streets and booby-trapped buildings left behind by more than a month of almost continuous fighting, military officials said...

More.

Local Ski Resorts Going Blockbuster

Heh.

Reminds my of my younger days. We used to go skiing in the San Bernardino Mountains all the time.

This is going to be one of the best snow seasons in a long time, perhaps a decade or more.

Death Toll at 11 from Swath of Tornadoes That Wreaked Destruction in Dallas Area (VIDEO)

At USA Today, "Texas under siege: Tornadoes, flooding, snow and ice."

And at Dallas Morning News, "Garland tornado that killed 8 classified as EF4; 3 others killed in Collin County":

Hundreds huddled in shelters Sunday while trying to add up the damage to their homes, churches and schools caused by deadly storms that blew through North Texas.

A tornado that blew through Garland killing eight people Saturday night has been classified as an EF4, with winds up to 200 mph, according to the National Weather Service. And a tornado that killed two people in Copeville has been classified as an EF2.

Meteorologists also rated the tornado that touched ground in Rowlett an EF3.

Eleven people, including an infant, were killed in Dallas and Collin counties, and as many as 11 tornadoes were reported to the Weather Service. Meteorologists were working Sunday to confirm just how many tornadoes touched down across North Texas.

The reported tornadoes started as far south as Hillsboro and moving north toward Blue Ridge and northeast to Sulphur Springs...

Elites and Media Really Hate Donald Trump's Voters

True. So very, very true.

From Michael Walsh, at the New York Post.

See also the Chicago Boyz, "The Trump Phenomenon," and Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "ANALYSIS: TRUE. Elites and media really hate Donald Trump’s voters, Michael Walsh writes":

In the movie business, there’s something called the “cheer moment,” when the long-suffering hero finally decks his tormentor with a satisfying right cross. What the Beltway Republicans fail to understand is that their conservative base — which gave them stunning congressional victories in 2010 and 2014 and has nothing to show for it — has been longing for precisely that moment since Reagan crushed Mondale 49-1 in 1984.

The Trumpkins are sick of winning and having nothing to show for it, and their vengeance will be terrible. Maybe the Establishment should stop belittling them and listen instead.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

Behind-the-Scenes Footage with Swimsuit Model Hannah Davis (VIDEO)

She's fabulous.

Watch, via GQ, "It’s Our Pleasure to Present Hannah Davis."

Plus, flashback, "Sports Illustrated's Summer of Swim Heats Up with 2015 Cover Model Hannah Davis," and "Celebrate Fourth of July with Hannah Davis."

Ola Wanserska Wishes Very Merry Christmas by Taking Big Bite Out of Chocolate Santa Claus (VIDEO)

That's a big Santa, heh.

Watch, via Playboy, "Instagram Model Ola Wanserska Wishes You a Merry Christmas."

Kyra Santoro Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Casting Call (VIDEO)

More loveliness.

Israel's Homegrown Enemies

From Caroline Glick, at JPost.

Some background at the Times of Israel, "Clip shows far-right wedding-goers celebrating Duma killings":

Israeli youngsters, said to be friends of detainees in deadly firebombing, stab photo of 18-month-old victim; wave firebombs, rifles and knives at Jerusalem event.

And watch, "Jewish Radicals Celebrating Wedding by Stabbing Photo of Dawabsheh Baby."

Hey, it's a problem. No beating around the bush, although Glick denounces the left's false equivalence between Jewish supporters of right-wing terrorism and the global left's support for Palestinian-Iranian-Islamic terrorism for the destruction Israel.

Graduation Rates Rise, But Fewer Students Ready for College-Level Academic Work

The story's out of Greenville, S.C., so you can guess the race of the students who're graduating underprepared.

At the New York Times, "As Graduation Rates Rise, Experts Fear Diplomas Come Up Short":

GREENVILLE, S.C. — A sign in a classroom here at Berea High School, northwest of downtown in the largest urban district in the state, sends this powerful message: “Failure Is Not an Option. You Will Pass. You Will Learn. You Will Succeed.”

By one measure, Berea, with more than 1,000 pupils, is helping more students succeed than ever: The graduation rate, below 65 percent just four years ago, has jumped to more than 80 percent.

But that does not necessarily mean that all of Berea’s graduates, many of whom come from poor families, are ready for college — or even for the working world. According to college entrance exams administered to every 11th grader in the state last spring, only one in 10 Berea students were ready for college-level work in reading, and about one in 14 were ready for entry-level college math. And on a separate test of skills needed to succeed in most jobs, little more than half of the students demonstrated that they could handle the math they would need.

It is a pattern repeated in other school districts across the state and country — urban, suburban and rural — where the number of students earning high school diplomas has risen to historic peaks, yet measures of academic readiness for college or jobs are much lower. This has led educators to question the real value of a high school diploma and whether graduation requirements are too easy.

“Does that diploma guarantee them a hope for a life where they can support a family?” asked Melanie D. Barton, the executive director of the Education Oversight Committee in South Carolina, a legislative agency. Particularly in districts where student achievement is very low, she said, “I really don’t see it.”

Few question that in today’s economy, finishing high school is vital, given that the availability of jobs for those without a diploma has dwindled. The Obama administration has hailed the rising graduation rate, saying schools are expanding opportunities for students to succeed. Earlier this month, the Department of Education announced that the national graduation rate hit 82 percent in 2013-14, the highest on record.

But “the goal is not just high school graduation,” Arne Duncan, the departing secretary of education, said in a telephone interview. “The goal is being truly college and career ready.”

The most recent evaluation of 12th graders on a national test of reading and math found that fewer than 40 percent were ready for college level work. College remediation and dropout rates remain stubbornly high, particularly at two-year institutions, where fewer than a third who enroll complete a degree even within three years.

In South Carolina, even with a statewide high school graduation rate of 80.3 percent, some business leaders worry that not enough students have the abilities they need for higher-skilled jobs at Boeing, Volvo and BMW, which have built plants here in recent years. What is more, they say, students need to be able to collaborate and communicate effectively, skills they say high schools do not always teach.

“If you look at what a graduation diploma guarantees today,” said Pamela P. Lackey, the president of AT&T South Carolina, “the issue is we have a system of education that prepares them for a different type of work than we have as a reality today.”

Still, there is no single reason these rates have increased.

Economists point to a decline in the teenage pregnancy rate, as well as a reduction in violent crime among teenagers. Some districts use data systems to identify students with multiple absences or failed classes so educators can better help them. And an increasing number of states and districts offer students more chances to make up failed credits online or in short tutoring sessions without repeating a whole semester or more.

States also vary widely in diploma requirements. In California, South Carolina and Tennessee, the authorities have recently eliminated requirements that students pass exit exams to qualify for a diploma. Alaska, California, Wisconsin and Wyoming demand far fewer credits to graduate than most states, according to the Education Commission of the States, although local school districts may require more.

According to one analysis of requirements for the class of 2014, 32 states did not require that all graduates take four years of English and math through Algebra II or its equivalent, which is often defined as the minimum to be prepared for college.

“Students and their families rely on and trust the high school diploma as a signal of readiness,” said Alissa Peltzman, the vice president of state policy at Achieve, a nonprofit that performed the study. “It needs to mean something. Otherwise, it’s a false promise for thousands of students.”

Over the past decade in California, several large urban districts adopted coursework guidelines aligned to entrance requirements at the state’s public universities. Los Angeles initially required that students earn at least a C in those classes, but the number of students on track to graduate plummeted. Now grades of D or higher are accepted...

I'd bet reduced standards are the No. 1 factor in reduced college readiness. Certainly in California, if not the country as a whole. I mean, sheesh, a passing grade is a D for college credit, even in my political science classes.

But continue reading.

And it's interesting to note the inequality implications when comparing these less-well-off urban schools with affluent suburban ones, like the New Jersey school district where the battles are over whether students are pushed to get an A+ in calculus, rather than an A.

'Whole Child' Approach to Learning Divides Families in New Jersey School District

The "whole child" approach is a way to reduce standards, which would help some students be less stressed and more successful. Interestingly, it's the parents of white children who're protesting. Asian parents are going for it, however.

At the New York Times, "New Jersey School District Eases Pressure on Students, Baring an Ethnic Divide":

This fall, David Aderhold, the superintendent of a high-achieving school district near Princeton, N.J., sent parents an alarming 16-page letter.

The school district, he said, was facing a crisis. Its students were overburdened and stressed out, juggling too much work and too many demands.

In the previous school year, 120 middle and high school students were recommended for mental health assessments; 40 were hospitalized. And on a survey administered by the district, students wrote things like, “I hate going to school,” and “Coming out of 12 years in this district, I have learned one thing: that a grade, a percentage or even a point is to be valued over anything else.”

With his letter, Dr. Aderhold inserted West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District into a national discussion about the intense focus on achievement at elite schools, and whether it has gone too far.

At follow-up meetings, he urged parents to join him in advocating a holistic, “whole child” approach to schooling that respects “social-emotional development” and “deep and meaningful learning” over academics alone. The alternative, he suggested, was to face the prospect of becoming another Palo Alto, Calif., where outsize stress on teenage students is believed to have contributed to two clusters of suicides in the last six years.

But instead of bringing families together, Dr. Aderhold’s letter revealed a fissure in the district, which has 9,700 students, and one that broke down roughly along racial lines. On one side are white parents like Catherine Foley, a former president of the Parent Teacher Student Association at her daughter’s middle school, who has come to see the district’s increasingly pressured atmosphere as antithetical to learning.

“My son was in fourth grade and told me, ‘I’m not going to amount to anything because I have nothing to put on my résumé,’ ” Ms. Foley said.

On the other side are parents like Mike Jia, one of the thousands of Asian-American professionals who have moved to the district in the past decade, who said Dr. Aderhold’s reforms would amount to a “dumbing down” of his children’s education.

“What is happening here reflects a national anti-intellectual trend that will not prepare our children for the future,” Mr. Jia said.

About 10 minutes from Princeton and an hour and a half from New York City, West Windsor and Plainsboro have become popular bedroom communities for technology entrepreneurs, pharmaceutical researchers and engineers, drawn in large part by the public schools. From the last three graduating classes, 16 seniors were admitted to M.I.T. It churns out Science Olympiad winners, classically trained musicians and students with perfect SAT scores.

The district has become increasingly popular with immigrant families from China, India and Korea. This year, 65 percent of its students are Asian-American, compared with 44 percent in 2007. Many of them are the first in their families born in the United States.

They have had a growing influence on the district. Asian-American parents are enthusiastic supporters of the competitive instrumental music program. They have been huge supporters of the district’s advanced mathematics program, which once began in the fourth grade but will now start in the sixth. The change to the program, in which 90 percent of the participating students are Asian-American, is one of Dr. Aderhold’s reforms.

Asian-American students have been avid participants in a state program that permits them to take summer classes off campus for high school credit, allowing them to maximize the number of honors and Advanced Placement classes they can take, another practice that Dr. Aderhold is limiting this school year.

With many Asian-American children attending supplemental instructional programs, there is a perception among some white families that the elementary school curriculum is being sped up to accommodate them.

Both Asian-American and white families say the tension between the two groups has grown steadily over the past few years, as the number of Asian families has risen. But the division has become more obvious in recent months as Dr. Aderhold has made changes, including no-homework nights, an end to high school midterms and finals, and a “right to squeak” initiative that made it easier to participate in the music program.

At a packed meeting of the school district’s Board of Education held shortly before the winter break, a middle school cafeteria was filled with parents, with Asian-Americans sitting on one side and white families on the other. Some parents and students described rampant cheating, grade fixation and days so stressful that some students could not wait for them to end. But other parents, primarily Asian-American ones, described a different picture, one in which their values were being ignored...

Hideous Black Lives Matter Protesters Attack Multiple U.S. Cities Before Christmas (VIDEO)

These are terrible, truly evil people.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Just before Christmas, Black Lives Matter protests roil cities across the U.S.":

It's the most wonderful time of the year and a winter of discontent, a season of police bullhorns and Christmas lights.

Demonstrators protesting police shootings of black men confronted last-minute holiday shoppers and travelers in California and the Midwest this week, seeing the crowds as an opportunity to draw attention to their cause.

In Chicago on Thursday, more than 100 demonstrators marched down North Michigan Avenue, the city's premier shopping corridor, and laid down on the street for a "die-in." They also blocked access to some stores where Christmas Eve shoppers were hoping to wrap up their tardy gift-buying.

The demonstrators were again protesting the October 2014 police shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black 17-year-old carrying a knife who was killed when a Chicago police officer shot him 16 times.

The officer, Jason Van Dyke, has been charged with first-degree murder. Footage released last month appeared to show McDonald walking away from Van Dyke, sparking protests that have yet to fully die down, much as the Black Lives Matter movement has remained in national headlines since last year's protests in Ferguson, Mo.

"When one part of Chicago is affected, all of Chicago is affected," one of the demonstrators, Alex Thiedmann, said of the "Black Christmas" demonstration on North Michigan Avenue. "If I remain silent, I become an oppressor."

Onlookers affected by the protest had a mixed response. Emily Grossman, 36, was kept from getting an iPhone at the Apple Store. "I hate to put myself first, but this is BS," she said.

Rabiah Muhammad came downtown for a doctor's appointment but stopped to watch the protests.

"I was walking down the street and I saw all these beautiful people of all ages and colors," she said. "I think it's a bigger problem than the city of Chicago. It's an American problem. This kind of brutality? That's not what our country is supposed to be."

A day earlier, shoppers and travelers also encountered demonstrators in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Minneapolis.

On Wednesday afternoon, activists affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement shut down the southbound lanes of the 405 Freeway in Westchester for about 10 to 15 minutes, writing chalk messages on the pavement. Up to nine demonstrators were arrested.

"On one of the busiest travel days of the year, Black Lives Matter is calling for a halt on Christmas as usual in memorial of all of the loved ones we have lost and continue to lose this year to law enforcement violence without justice or recourse," a statement from Black Lives Matter organizers said...

Right.

"Calling a halt" to Christmas. These people are the biggest assholes. Truly hideous.

Still more.

Pat Condell: 'We Want the Truth'

A great video:

U.S. Flights Hit by Major Weather Delays Ahead of Christmas (VIDEO)

At WSJ, "U.S. Flights Hit by Major Weather Delays":

Fog and storms triggered major flight delays in pockets of the U.S. ahead of Christmas, while airlines were bracing for a winter storm predicted to sweep across much of the country over the weekend.

A line of storms stretching from Louisiana to New York held up arrivals on Thursday at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the busiest U.S. airport by traffic, by an average of 2½ hours as of 2 p.m. local time, the Federal Aviation Administration said on its website.

At least 11 people were killed across the South as springlike storms mixed with unseasonably warm weather and spawned rare Christmastime tornadoes, according to the Associated Press.

Delta Air Lines Inc., which operates its largest hub at Hartsfield-Jackson, was the most affected carrier, with a third of its mainline flights nationwide delayed, according to FlightAware.com, a tracking service.

The Atlanta-based carrier said it had started to cancel some flights as the storms forced planes to divert from Hartsfield.

While earlier delays at airports around Washington and New York caused by the weather had abated by early afternoon, Delta said they could return because of air traffic congestion in other parts of the country.

Nationwide, 3,049 flights were delayed and 349 canceled as of 5 p.m. Thursday on the East Coast. That came after weather issues in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest had triggered the above-average delays and cancellations earlier in the week. Almost 11,000 total flights from Tuesday through Wednesday were delayed, and around 750 canceled, according to FlightAware. On typical winter days, there are about 4,000 delays and 150 cancellations in the U.S.

Dozens of regional jet flights operated on behalf of major airlines by SkyWest Inc. and other carriers have been canceled, according to FlightAware, as well as more than 60 Southwest Airlines Co. services.

American Airline Group Inc. said it had canceled four mainline flights, alongside 84 flown by regional partners. United Continental Holdings Inc. said it wasn’t experiencing major disruptions...

More.

Powerful Storm System Across South and Midwest Kills at Least 11 (VIDEO)

At WSJ, "Dozens injured, homes destroyed after tornadoes touch down":

A powerful storm system that tore across parts of the South and Midwest claimed at least 11 lives, injured dozens of people and destroyed homes and businesses just as final preparations for Christmas celebrations were under way.

The system spawned more than a dozen tornadoes, including a potent one in Mississippi on Wednesday that remained on the ground for roughly 50 miles, an especially long stretch for a December twister, said Greg Carbin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center.

Mississippi was hit especially hard. At least seven deaths were reported there as of Thursday afternoon, and storms caused widespread damage to houses, mobile homes and other structures, according to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. More than 1,400 power outages occurred, and storm debris forced numerous road closures.

Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency Thursday and toured damaged areas in several counties. “Mississippians are resilient in difficult times, and we will meet this challenge head on for those that are in need,” he said.

In Tennessee, three fatalities were reported, and state and local officials were conducting damage assessments on Thursday, according to the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. One death was reported in Arkansas as a result of a tree that crashed on a house, said Barbara Hager, manager of the Arkansas Response and Coordination Center.

Apart from tornadoes, the system produced storms with heavy rain and winds of 50 miles an hour and higher, Mr. Carbin said. It was generated by a combination of a powerful jet stream with a mass of warm, moist air over the region, he said. Storms extended across a swath of territory from Arkansas to Ohio...

More.

Garth Kemp is Back!

Garth Kemp was fired for tweeting about the Kardashians --- unfavorably tweeting --- earlier this year.

See AdWeek, "Veteran KABC Weather Anchor Out."

Seems like an extremely minor discretion, but ABC's loss is CBS's gain.

Fire, 7" Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB — #1 Best Seller in Computers & Accessories

At Amazon, Fire, 7" Display, Wi-Fi, 8 GB - Includes Special Offers, Black.