Tobin Harshaw: Jerry, before we get to the immediate issue of Puerto Rico, why don't you give us a brief rundown of your own experience in the Navy with disaster relief.More.
Jerry Hendrix: Like virtually every sailor of the past century, going back to Theodore Roosevelt’s dispatch of the Great White Fleet to respond to a massive earthquake on the island of Sicily, I had several exposures to humanitarian assistance/disaster relief operations during my career. Perhaps the most instructive was when I served with Tactical Air Control Squadron 11 from 2005 to 2008. During that tour, the squadron provided detachments in response to earthquakes and volcano eruptions, including directing air operations in Kashmir following a 7.1 magnitude earthquake. The devastation made the roads largely impassable to wheeled vehicles and at that altitude the air is so thin that helicopter cannot lift as many supplies with each flight.
Most of the time, our people operated from light amphibious carriers. But we also supplied detachments to the West Coast-based hospital ship USNS Mercy when she got underway in support of the planned Pacific Partnership summer exercise.
TH: So, it seems like everybody has blasted Trump administration's response to the Puerto Rico crisis. Has that criticism been fair?
JH: No, I don’t think so. First of all, there was a fair amount of anticipatory action that is not being recognized. Amphibious ships, including the light amphibious carriers Kearsarge and Wasp and the amphibious landing ship dock Oak Hill were at sea and dispatched to Puerto Rico ahead of the hurricane’s impact.
These are large ships that have large flight decks to land and dispatch heavy-lift CH-53 helicopters to and from disaster sites. They also have big well-decks -- exposed surfaces that are lower than the fore and aft of the ship -- from which large landing craft can be dispatched to shore carrying over 150 tons of water, food and other supplies on each trip. These are actually the ideal platforms for relief operations owing to their range of assets. The ships, due to their designs to support Marine amphibious landings in war zones, also have hospitals onboard to provide medical treatment on a large scale. That these ships were in the area should be viewed as a huge positive for the administration and the Department of Defense.
TH: On the flip side, others say that sending the hospital ship Comfortwas unnecessary -- purely symbolic and possibly counterproductive -- given that the number of hospital beds was not the problem. What's your opinion?
JH: Comfort can add to the solution, but her lack of well-decks and large boats as well as her limited support of helicopter operations means that she has to go alongside a pier to be effective. In the immediate aftermath of a huge storm, pulling into a port that has not been surveyed for underwater obstacles like trees or cables or other refuse is an invitation to either put a hole your ship or foul your propellers or rudders.
That being said, there was a broad misunderstanding of the Comfort’s mission. She is not an “emergency response ship” but rather a hospital ship. She was built to accompany a large military force into a war zone as part of a buildup over time of capabilities to respond to wartime injuries. She is manned by military and civilian mariners as well as active and reserve medical personnel. It takes time to both man and equip her for sea. Given that there was no certainty where the hurricane would hit, it doesn’t make sense to have readied her prior to its impact.
It is revelatory of where the U.S. group mind is now that when the American public thinks about ships like the Comfort and Mercy, they automatically think of them as part of a civilian emergency response force rather than quietly considering the type of potential conflict that would require a hospital ship with 1,000 beds. I can tell you that when I think of those ships, I internally shudder at the thought of the type of conflict they were intended to support.
TH: Your plaudits toward the White House on all this are surprising to say the least. But where does the response still need to improve?
JH: One area in which the Trump administration could possibly lend additional assistance would be looking at a more robust activation of its assets in the Defense Department's Transportation Command to include more heavy-lift and cargo aircraft, as well as Maritime Administration shipping to move the logistics-heavy large infrastructure items on the ocean. Everything from bulldozers to transformers needs to come by ships, and it's been decades since it was really flexed to its full capacity. This would have the dual purpose of revealing any significant weaknesses in the Transportation Command assets and readiness should we need it in a military emergency down the road.
TH: Many critics feel that Florida and Houston had much better preparation before their storms hit this month. What could have been done better in advance in Puerto Rico, and what can be done in the rebuilding process to help minimize damage next time around?
JH: Puerto Rico is an island that suffers from its position in the middle of the Caribbean and its physical separation from the U.S. Its roads were in disrepair and its electrical grid was antiquated prior to the hurricane. The island has also suffered for years from ineffective local government and rising local territorial debt.
The Navy used to operate a large Navy base there, Naval Station Roosevelt Roads. I spent six months on the island in 1993, but when the island’s population protested the presence of the training range at nearby Vieques Island, the Navy shuttered the base, taking $300 million a year out of the Puerto Rican economy. I have no doubt that the federal government will be taking a hard look at large infrastructure investments and I hope that local governments look at building and general construction codes to make future buildings more hurricane survivable.
TH: What has been the most impressive crisis response/disaster relief operation undertaken by the Pentagon in recent decades? The tidal wave and nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan? The Indian Ocean typhoon?
JH: Without a doubt the Joint Force response to the 2004-05 earthquake and tsunami was the most massive and well-executed relief operation of my professional career. Virtually the entire U.S. Seventh Fleet under the leadership of Vice Admiral Doug Crowder responded with multiple carrier and amphibious strike groups. Water, food, medicine and other supplies flowed to and from disaster sites all over a vast geographical region. Crews worked for weeks on end to bring aid to people miles from the shoreline. The amount of coordination required was on the scale of a small war, and yet the supplies flowed both efficiently and effectively to where they were needed most.
TH: What other sorts of "soft power" can the Navy and other branches put an emphasis on going beyond reacting to disasters? Things like building roads and health facilities in the developing world?
JH: Exercises like the Pacific Partnership are superb for building good will. Navy SeaBees help to build school buildings and other administrative facilities with local tribal leaders. Wells are dug to provide fresh water and medical teams provide basic measles-mumps-rubella and polio vaccines, greatly decreasing child mortality rates in remote regions. These type of operations provide long term benefits for the U.S. in regions where radical terrorism can easily take hold...
This is actually the sixth book I have written on the subject of the transformation and its destructive consequences.
In addition to whatever analytic contributions are made in these pages, they provide a compendium of anecdotal evidence about the manner in which progressive activists have taken control of liberal arts curricula and reverted them to their 19th-century origins as instruments of religious indoctrination. The new doctrines differ from their 19th-century predecessors in that they are political and secular, having been shaped by Marxism and its derivatives. These “progressive” doctrines, however, share with traditional religions the same impulse to redeem a fallen world and to suppress what they regard as hostile—therefore heretical—ideas in the name of human progress.
One can measure the current corruption of the academic profession through a summary observation about the views of academic historians that was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Historical Society. The summary appears in an article written by Jennifer Delton, a tenured history professor at Skidmore College—a top-tier liberal arts school. It describes a purported orthodoxy in historians’ views of Cold War anti-communism.
According to Delton, this historical consensus regards Cold War anti-communism as an irrational phenomenon and a species of political persecution. Equally as striking as this problematic characterization is Delton’s assumption that an orthodoxy about so controversial an issue can and should be a normal condition of academic scholarship. Here are her words: “However fiercely historians disagree about the merits of American communism [sic!], they almost universally agree that the post-World War II red scare signaled a rightward turn in American politics. The consensus is that an exaggerated, irrational fear of communism, bolstered by a few spectacular spy cases, created an atmosphere of persecution and hysteria that was exploited and fanned by conservative opportunists such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. . . . We may add detail and nuance to this story, but this, basically, is what we tell our students about post-World II anti-communism, also known as McCarthyism.” (emphasis added)
In other words, it is the professional opinion of this tenured professor, the editors of the Journal of the Historical Society and, apparently, academic historians generally that concern about a domestic communist threat during the Cold War was equivalent to “McCarthyism”—a witch-hunting mania about imaginary demons. This, according to Delton, is what academic historians “tell our students,” and not as mere opinion but as a historical consensus, and thus an academic fact. This consensus exists, apparently, in the face of easily established, indisputable facts that refute it: the fact that McCarthy was censured by an anti-communist Senate, including senators who sat on his committee; the fact that he was opposed by an anti-communist president, Dwight Eisenhower, and by anti-communist liberals such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who wrote one of the seminal anti-communist books of the period, The Vital Center; or the proven fact that the federal government had been penetrated by communist agents at the time, and at the highest levels.
It goes without saying that no conservative scholar could agree with the conclusion of Professor Delton and her colleagues, and thus no conservative scholar could be readily regarded by the consensus she describes as a reasonable member of her profession.
To ideologues like Delton, the contents of this volume will seem an extreme view of what has taken place in American liberal arts colleges and graduate institutions. But to recognize the intellectual corruption of the contemporary academy is hardly what is extreme; what is extreme is the politicized state of academic discourse, the confusion of scholarship with propaganda, and therefore the widespread debasement of the academic enterprise. What is extreme is the general comfort level of the academic community with this travesty of scholarship and, worse, with the practice of indoctrinating students in the classroom.
The ramifications of this reversion to doctrinal instruction and pre-scientific standards of scholarship have been destructive not only to higher education but to society at large. Since collegiate institutions are the training grounds for all professions, this corruption has adversely affected a widespread array of policies, both foreign and domestic; it has warped cultural attitudes towards race and gender (see volumes 5 and 6 in this series); and it has intruded political biases into such civically crucial professions as the law, journalism and secondary school education.
The contents of this volume were immediately inspired by a campaign I conducted to counter these trends and promote a restoration of the academic values associated with the modern research university, in particular the identification of scientific standards of inquiry with academic professionalism. The goal of the campaign, which lasted for roughly seven years and ultimately failed, could also be viewed as an attempt to restore a professional standard appropriate to education in a democratic society—that teachers should teach students how to think and not tell them what to think. This standard was established in a famous “Declaration on the Principles of Academic Tenure and Academic Freedom” issued by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915, and until recently verbally embraced by all reputable academic institutions.
The campaign I organized to defend those principles was ferociously opposed by the tenured left, most strikingly by the very organization that had devised the original standard: the American Association of University Professors, whose governance had fallen into radical hands. Although my campaign failed, it revealed the extent of the AAUP’s defection from its original purposes and its determination to protect a new professorial “right”—the “right” of faculty to indoctrinate their students. This was made indisputably clear in the AAUP’s opposition to a crucial passage of the Declaration that I regularly cited in my campaign, and which had been adopted verbatim by Penn State University as its academic freedom policy. There can be no better introduction to the present volume than to recount the fate of this policy at the hands of the AAUP and its academic agents.
Known as HR 64, the Penn State policy read: “It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects. The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials, which they need if they are to think intelligently. Hence, in giving instruction upon controversial matters the faculty member is expected be of a fair and judicial mind, and to set forth justly, without supersession or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators.”
The AAUP’s attack on this specific policy was launched in the winter of 2010, just after events in Pennsylvania convinced me of the futility of my reform efforts. Legislative hearings to inquire into the state of academic freedom in Pennsylvania—hearings in which I played a seminal role—were effectively subverted by the AAUP and the teacher unions, while the Republican Party and conservative groups that should have supported the reform effort sat on the sidelines. Without their active involvement there was little more that I could do.
The AAUP’s attack was led by its leftist president, Cary Nelson, whose book No University Is an Island, was published that December. In his book Nelson assaulted me personally and followed his assault with an attack on the Penn State policy I had championed. Nelson described the Penn State policy on academic freedom as an attempt to restrict faculty speech and curtail academic freedom. This was the same Orwellian position the AAUP had advanced throughout the controversy; but it was the first time anyone had made that argument specifically against the Penn State policy I had praised. Nelson and I had debated each other on several occasions, so he was thoroughly familiar with my campaign and the fact that I had made HR 64 and the 1915 Declaration its cornerstones. His attack also targeted the “Academic Bill of Rights” I had attempted to persuade universities to adopt, which was an attempt to codify the principles of the 1915 Declaration. Nelson did not merely criticize the Penn State policy but condemned it as “especially bad” and an example of “McCarthy era rhetoric.” His objection to the policy was that it denied professors the right to advance their political agendas in the classroom.
According to Nelson: “Like Horowitz, Penn State failed at the time to conceptualize the sense in which all teaching and research is fundamentally and deeply political.” This was a candid admission of the anti-academic agendas of both Nelson and the AAUP. To them, “academic freedom” meant a license for professors to use their classrooms as political platforms to indoctrinate their students.
Political agendas aside, Nelson’s smear of the Penn State academic freedom policy and my efforts made no logical sense. Far from seeking to suppress dissenting ideas, the 1915 Declaration, the Penn State policy and my Academic Bill of Rights stipulated that faculty were obligated to present conflicting opinions on controversial matters in a fair-minded manner. In other words, they were statements in behalf of intellectual diversity. Neither document denied professors the right to express their views, or to freely draw conclusions from their research. They did require them to observe a professional standard in the classroom; in particular, to be mindful that students were in the process of forming their opinions and should be allowed to do so. It was only in this sense that it restricted professors’ “freedom of speech”—specifically the “right” to use their classrooms for political attitudinizing. But this was no more restrictive than the codes governing doctors or lawyers in their professional settings. And it was in accord with the views of the leading academic authority on academic freedom: Robert C. Post, dean of the Yale Law School.
In dismissing Penn State’s policy, Nelson suggested that the AAUP had “more nuanced” methods of determining such matters than the Penn State officials, and that “what Penn State ended up with is nothing less than thought control.” The absurdity of this was transparent. To require professors to present divergent views to their students, and to do so in a fair-minded manner, was hardly “thought control.”
Shortly after Nelson’s book appeared, the Faculty Senate at Penn State went into action to implement his agenda, voting to formally eviscerate policy HR 64 and rewrite it to permit the abuses it was designed to prevent. Specifically, the Penn State Faculty Senate removed the following sentence: “It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects.” The Senate then rewrote the policy, restricting professorial fairness to those controversial viewpoints that were part of the discourse of the academic professions—professions that had effectively purged themselves of non-leftist viewpoints. The revised version read: “Faculty members are expected to present information fairly, and to set forth justly, divergent opinions that arise out of scholarly methodology and professionalism.” (emphasis added) In other words, practically speaking, only the divergent opinions of left-wing academics need be presented fairly and justly.
Other opinions—notably conservative opinions—which were not part of existing “scholarly methodology and professionalism,” would not be covered by this fairness requirement. The instigator of these changes, Cary Nelson, applauded the revision in a statement that made no sense at all: “Penn State had one of the most restrictive and troubling policies limiting intellectual freedom in the classroom that I know of. It undermined the normal human capacity to make comparisons and contrasts between different fields and between different cultures and historical periods.”
Incoherent as this explanation was, Nelson had successfully engineered a policy that formally permitted professors to indoctrinate their students. This remains the policy of the AAUP and faculty throughout the liberal arts academy today. In short, I had to face the reality that my seven year campaign to restore the concept of academic freedom as defined by the AAUP in its 1915 Declaration had led to the formal repudiation of its principles by the same organization.
Part I of the present volume is an essay selected because it frames the subject, a practice I have adopted in previous volumes. It is an edited version of the introduction to The Professors, a book I wrote in 2005 about the unprofessional classroom attitudes of over 100 prominent professors. In the controversy generated by the book, the substance of this introduction was completely ignored. Not a single response from my academic opponents addressed the substantive critiques contained in its text.
Part II recounts my experiences on college campuses in the five years preceding the creation of the Academic Bill of Rights, along with my observations regarding the decline of academic discourse under pressures from the academic left.
Part III describes my campaign for an Academic Bill of Rights. This document was a codification of the principles set forth in the 1915 Declaration. It was inspired by the idea that if professors have an obligation to act professionally in the classroom, then students have a right to expect a professional instruction; in particular, to hear fair-minded presentations of divergent views on controversial issues, along with the freedom to draw their own conclusions.
Part IV continues the account of the campaign for an Academic Bill of Rights and describes the attacks against it by the American Association of University Professors, the American Federation of Teachers, and faculty senates like the one at Penn State.
Part V recounts the controversies surrounding two of the books I wrote, The Professors and Indoctrination U., and more of my failed attempts to persuade the academic community of their obligation to present contested issues as controversial and to observe a professional decorum in the classroom.
I have concluded the text with an epilogue containing a proposal for reforming universities and re-establishing standards of instruction in the classroom. I wrote this proposal in 2010, before the AAUP eviscerated the Penn State academic freedom policy. I did not publish it then because I knew that any proposal associated with me would be dead in the water because of the war the AAUP had declared on all my efforts, however modest and reasonable. I publish it now because I have given up any hope that universities can institute such a reform. The faculty opposition is too devious and too strong; and even more importantly there is no conservative will to see such reforms enacted. Therefore there seems to be no harm in publishing the document now, and it does serve to clarify my goals in undertaking my campaign.
Keep reading.
Like other Democrats who have rejected democracy, Ms. Heidewald was inspired by Mrs. Clinton’s defeat to declare Donald Trump “Not My President,” and create a YouTube program “Resistance News Network.”
Ms. Heidewald denounces Republicans as “fascists” and, after the 2016 election, she created an organization called The Rose Resistance “to fight fascism and white supremacy” and “help protect the people most endangered by the Trump regime.” Ms. Heidewald claims to stand for “democracy” when, in fact, she advocates a one-party dictatorship by her rhetoric that delegitimizes Republicans. She seems to believe, and seeks to persuade others, that the 63 million Americans who voted to elect Donald Trump should have no right to be represented in government.
This rhetoric of “progressive” intolerance (reflecting the influence of Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School) is the antithesis of democracy. It is therefore not surprising to see Ms. Eichenwald with an anti-Trump poster from the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP).
Those readers who recall my coverage of the 2016 Republican National Convention will remember that the anti-police protesters in Cleveland waved RCP posters that declared “America Was Never Great.”
“There will be no peace unless there is justice,” Professor Cornell West said Tuesday in a speech to an anti-police rally here organized by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Speaking through a megaphone amid a crowd of protesters gathered at Public Square in downtown Cleveland, West invoked “the legacy of white supremacy in this country that goes back 400 years” to condemn police. West spoke in front of a giant RCP banner declaring, “Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution. STOP MURDER BY POLICE.” Activists with the RCP held aloft signs that read, “America Was NEVER Great! We Need to OVERTHROW This System!”The RCP, which advocates the “overthrow” of the American “system,” is a Maoist cult founded by Bob Avakian. The RCP became notorious in the 1980s when it called for the assassination of Ronald Reagan. The RCP and its front group Refuse Fascism have recently made headlines by announcing nationwide protests to “end the Trump/Pence Regime” ...
Steve Hoang had more than schoolwork to fret about his first year of college. He went hungry.This is leftist socialist culture taking over. It's not as if "food insecurity" is a new thing. If you don't have enough to eat you get a job. You don't worry about college classes. You work to support yourself. It's pretty basic.
“I lost 25 pounds,” said the UC Irvine sophomore. “It was one of my biggest worries, that I wouldn’t have enough to eat.”
The tall, thin 18-year-old was among hundreds of students who lined up this past week to take a peek at UCI’s newly expanded food pantry, intended to help students like him.
Across Southern California and the nation, colleges and universities no longer view the concept of the starving student as an inevitable joke, but a serious issue. To address what’s become known as “food insecurity,” campuses are opening up free pantries.
Some are as small as closets. In fact, UCLA’s pantry is called the Food Closet.
Others began small and grew.
Cal State San Bernardino on Thursday dedicated their renamed Obershaw DEN pantry, which was remodeled and has added refrigeration for perishables.
A day earlier, the UCI campus celebrated the opening of a remodeled pantry touted as the biggest in the UC system. At more than 1,800 square feet, it features not only free food and toiletries but sitting areas, a “kitchenette” with small appliances and a space for weekly food demonstrations and nutrition talks.
There are more than 540 campus food pantries across the U.S. registered with the College and University Food Bank Alliance, which is tracking the trend.
All UC campuses – and all but one of the California state universities – now have food pantries, as do many community colleges.
Even some pricey private colleges, including Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and Chapman University in Orange, say they have students who simply can’t afford to cover the cost of tuition, books, labs, transportation and food.
“Some LMU students were surprised to see that kind of need at LMU,” said Lorena Chavez, the university’s assistant director for community engagement. Then, they began inquiring about it for research papers and to offer donations.
“For me, it was that ‘aha’ moment,” Chavez said. Need isn’t restricted to any one campus, she said, “especially when it comes to food insecurity.”
Going Hungry
For some students who visit local campus pantries, the free food is more than a supplement. It’s a necessity.
Studies indicate a significant percentage of college students are experiencing various levels of food insecurity, ranging from going hungry to poor diets:
A 2016 UC survey of nearly 9,000 students found that 42 percent experienced food insecurity; 23 percent had diets of reduced quality, variety or desirability; and 19 percent weren’t getting enough food because they couldn’t afford it.
A 2017 Community College report found that about 12.2 percent of students experienced food insecurity.
A 2016 Cal State University system study reporting preliminary data based on Cal State Long Beach respondents suggested 24 percent of students were experiencing food insecurity. A second phase of the survey of all the system’s 23 campuses is expected to be released next year.
“The narrative of the starving student is part of the problem,” said Rashida Crutchfield, a Cal State Long Beach assistant professor and lead investigator on the CSU report.
“A lot of people believe that struggle and eating a cup of noodles is just part of the college experience,” she said.
For many of the students, it’s not easy navigating the new terrain of college life. Some don’t want to burden their parents by asking for more financial help. Others know their parents, perhaps struggling themselves, can’t give more.
Today’s students don’t all fit the stereotype of an 18-year-old, single person. Many are returning to school as older students, some with families to support.
Whether there are more students today going hungry or awareness of a long-existing problem is growing is unclear. But officials cite factors that could be contributing to an increased need, including changing campus demographics and more students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as while higher costs for tuition and housing.
“Because no one has been doing this research, we don’t have comparable data to know whether it has changed over time,” Crutchfield said...
Puerto Rico's cell service is basically nonexistent. So this is happening https://t.co/Vesqx3oYKD via @USATODAY
— Blue Alert (@BlueAlertUs) September 30, 2017
From the comfort of his New Jersey golf resort, President Trump lashed out Saturday at the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the ravaged island’s residents, defending his administration’s hurricane response by suggesting that Puerto Ricans had not done enough to help themselves.More.
Trump’s Twitter assault, which began early Saturday and lasted until evening, was set off by criticism from Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who on Friday had criticized the federal response since Hurricane Maria’s Sept. 20 landfall.
“Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help,” Trump tweeted. He added: “They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 federal workers now on island doing a fantastic job.”
The president’s comments were a breathtaking and racially inflected swipe at residents who have labored for more than a week to survive without electricity, running water, food or medical supplies. Media reports have shown residents in the city and villages sweltering in line for hours with gas cans, hoping for enough fuel to run generators. Nearly every hospital in Puerto Rico lost power in the hurricane, though many have crept toward a semblance of operation. Thousands of crates of supplies have arrived in Puerto Rico, but their distribution has been slowed by destroyed roads and trucks and a shortage of drivers to deliver the goods around the island.
Media reports also have shown Puerto Ricans working together, a visible contradiction of the president’s suggestion that they and their leaders had avoided helping themselves. Cruz has been seen frequently on television reports, including wading through hip-deep water to help people and embracing sobbing constituents as she pleaded for more help.
“I am begging, begging anyone who can hear us to save us from dying,” Cruz said Friday. “We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency.”
Minutes after broadcasts showed Trump telling reporters at the White House on Friday that “we have done an incredible job,” Cruz asserted on camera that the world could see Puerto Ricans being treated “as animals that can be disposed of.”
The controversy created an awkward backdrop for Trump’s plans to visit Puerto Rico on Tuesday, and perhaps the American Virgin Islands, also hit hard by the hurricane.
As has been common in other Trump disputes, Democrats immediately condemned the president while Republican leaders — including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — remained silent. But some conservatives lamented the president’s reflexive attacks.
“The people of Puerto Rico are hungry, thirsty, homeless and fearful,” conservative writer and radio host Erick Erickson wrote in an essay. Erickson predicted, accurately, that Trump supporters would contend that Mayor Cruz deserved Trump’s treatment because she criticized the president first.
“Yay, President Trump punched a critic — a critic who is on an island trying her best to help others where most of the people now have no homes, no power, and no running water. What a man he is!” Erickson wrote.
Later in the day, Trump appeared to go out of his way to show some sympathy for the 3.5 million citizens on the island, blaming the news media and Democrats for any suggestion that the recovery effort had been faulty.
“Despite the Fake News Media in conjunction with the Dems, an amazing job is being done in Puerto Rico. Great people!” he tweeted, adding later, “To the people of Puerto Rico: Do not believe the #FakeNews!”
Trump’s comments marked the second straight weekend he has set off a national furor with tweets and comments that targeted nonwhites for criticism. Since last weekend — including on Saturday — he has gone after African American athletes protesting police violence by declining to stand when the national anthem is played. He has demanded that the National Football League fire all such protesters...
A political insurrection that is with Donald Trump in spirit but entirely out of his — or anyone’s — control. https://t.co/mU25YE7Odk
— Robert Costa (@costareports) September 30, 2017
The next Republican revolution began last week on a bright blue bus parked at a nighttime rally in Montgomery, Ala., days before a firebrand GOP candidate won the state’s Senate primary.Still more.
But unlike previous Republican revolutionaries, the hard-line figures who stepped out to cheers did not want to yank the party to the right on age-old issues such as taxes or spending. They wanted to gut it and leave its establishment smashed.
Fury infused these insurgents’ raw remarks as did a common theme: The Republican Party has failed its voters, and a national cleansing is needed in the coming year, regardless of whether President Trump is on board.
Longtime Republicans see a charged civil war on the horizon.
“There is an emotional component,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R) said of the frustrations of Trump’s core backers, who have grown increasingly vocal. “They want someone to kick over the table. And my advice to every Republican is: You better have an edge, or you become the problem.”
That populist rage in the base as Trump struggles to enact his priorities — which lifted former judge Roy Moore to victory on Tuesday against Trump’s ally, Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) — now threatens to upend GOP incumbents in 2018 as the latest incarnation of Republican grievance takes hold.
Stoked by former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and his incendiary media platform, Breitbart News, a new wave of anti-establishment activists and contenders is emerging to plot a political insurrection that is with Trump in spirit but entirely out of his — or anyone’s — control.
Central command is the “Breitbart Embassy,” a Capitol Hill townhouse where Bannon has recently huddled with candidates, from House prospects to Senate primary recruits. Hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah — Bannon’s wealthy allies — have already pledged millions to the cause, said people briefed on their plans.
In the last seven years, the Mercers have emerged as some of the biggest political donors on the right, plowing tens of millions into GOP committees and super PACs. Their money has gone both to shore up the national Republican Party and to finance outside groups taking on the Washington establishment.
So far this year, the Mercers have contributed $2.7 million to federal political committees and campaigns, finance filings show.
Beyond cash, Mercer and Bannon also offer GOP rebels a vast media and advocacy ecosystem that generates attention on social media as well as small-dollar donations. Run by Rebekah, the Mercer family foundation has given $50 million to conservative and free-market think tanks and policy groups from 2009 to 2015, according to tax records compiled by The Washington Post and GuideStar USA, which reports on nonprofit companies.
And that blue bus — sponsored by the Great America Alliance and carrying former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, among other conservative celebrities, across Alabama — is scheduling stops across the country.
“If you don’t do your job, you’re going to see the bus, and you’re going to get bounced,” said Ed Rollins, the group’s strategist.
Rollins and Eric L. Beach, another adviser to the advocacy group, insisted that money would not save their elected Republican targets, pointing out that in Alabama they spent about $200,000, compared with the more than $10 million spent by the national GOP and Strange-aligned groups...
Now she's doing the final thoughts for Fox. Everything is awful. Remember when conservatism involved principles instead of hair extensions? https://t.co/uhYfmD9ZUV
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) September 12, 2017
Watch this clip from @TomiLahren's Final Thoughts on NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. https://t.co/kxnnvDYc6g pic.twitter.com/taxiM11nFj
— FoxNewsInsider (@FoxNewsInsider) September 11, 2017
#Lucy @Stacey_poolefan @LucyMichelleGLM @BabeDepository @exxxcitement @5tayFro5ty @imperiotetas @Wildcard095 @Coach0302 @arg2012tumblr 🔥👌 pic.twitter.com/GdchbuQPCU
— JCG (fan Sophie) (@buquet1000) September 13, 2017
Three litres of water a day, probiotic powder and sunscreen: Elle Macpherson shares her beauty regime https://t.co/ha02JzMvWd
— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) September 18, 2017
Kirsten Powers wisely deleted this tweet about Hugh Hefner. pic.twitter.com/NFr7bDB1VB
— Brittain for Senate (@SenatorBrittain) September 28, 2017
Demi Rose shows off her famously curvaceous figure and TINY waist in a plunging blue bikini https://t.co/3eribdqZDz
— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) September 28, 2017
Polish actress Michalina Olszanska plays the role of Matilda Kshesinskaya, a young ballerina in a love affair with future Czar Nicholas II, in Russian director Alexei Uchitel's movie "Matilda."
A movie about a czar's love affair ignites violent protest from Russia's religious right https://t.co/SvcBoRpA3X pic.twitter.com/qtMxhdeQUo
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 29, 2017
"We don’t even know when we’re coming back": Puerto Ricans evacuate to Florida on a cruise ship https://t.co/dXoip3ixUm pic.twitter.com/iHOHlNBn7S
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 29, 2017
Let's consider frankly an aspect of the same-sex marriage debate not adequately covered so far: heterosexuality https://t.co/IOiCUBwsed
— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) September 29, 2017
My wife and I have six children. Gonna bet that's six more children than Dr. Pryor has.
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) September 29, 2017
Jennifer Egan doesn't read memoirs. "My feeling is always that I’m saving them for later." https://t.co/xCyPgLfkR6
— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) September 28, 2017
Mondaze with mega babe @SamanthaHoopes... 😍 https://t.co/zPrhYFAU6T pic.twitter.com/dzfaHdAZc8
— SI Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) September 25, 2017
#Villanueva Says He Made A Mistake
— Dr. Marty Fox (@DrMartyFox) September 26, 2017
Standing For The Anthem
Watch The Hostage Video
You Can Return Your Jerseys Nowpic.twitter.com/3IPhBITTUh
A work that has served as a literary cornerstone for the Vietnam generation, The 13th Valley follows the strange and terrifying Vietnam combat experiences of James Chelini, a telephone-systems installer who finds himself an infantryman in territory controlled by the North Vietnamese Army. Spiraling deeper and deeper into a world of conflict and darkness, this harrowing account of Chelini's plunge and immersion into jungle warfare traces his evolution from a semi-pacifist to an all-out warmonger. The seminal novel on the Vietnam experience, The 13th Valley is a classic that illuminates the war in Southeast Asia like no other book.
"This is the kind of rant you’d hear in a lousy sports bar." https://t.co/d4JqjHSCX9
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) September 25, 2017
No doubt most Americans agree with Mr. Trump that they don’t want their flag disrespected, especially by millionaire athletes. But Mr. Trump never stops at reasonable, and so he called for kneeling players to be fired or suspended, and if the league didn’t comply for fans to “boycott” the NFL.And at Instapundit, "WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Politicization of Everything."
He also plunged into the debate over head injuries without a speck of knowledge about the latest brain science, claiming that the NFL was “ruining the game” by trying to stop dangerous physical hits. This is the kind of rant you’d hear in a lousy sports bar.
Mr. Trump has managed to unite the players and owners against him, though several owners supported him for President and donated to his inaugural. The owners were almost obliged to defend their sport, even if their complaints that Mr. Trump was “divisive” ignored the divisive acts by Mr. Kaepernick and his media allies that injected politics into football in the first place.
Americans don’t begrudge athletes their free-speech rights—see the popularity of Charles Barkley —but disrespecting the national anthem puts partisanship above a symbol of nationhood that thousands have died for. Players who chose to kneel shouldn’t be surprised that fans around the country booed them on Sunday. This is the patriotic sentiment that they are helping Mr. Trump exploit for what he no doubt thinks is his own political advantage.
American democracy was healthier when politics at the ballpark was limited to fans booing politicians who threw out the first ball—almost as a bipartisan obligation. This showed a healthy skepticism toward the political class. But now the players want to be politicians and use their fame to lecture other Americans, the parsons of the press corps want to make them moral spokesmen, and the President wants to run against the players.
The losers are the millions of Americans who would rather cheer for their teams on Sunday as a respite from work and the other divisions of American life.
A single book might not change the world. But this utterly original meditation on art and war might transform the way you see the world—and that makes all the difference.
“How to live in the face of so much suffering? What difference can one person make in this beautiful, imperfect, and imperiled world?”
Through a dazzling combination of memoir, history, reporting, visual culture, literature, and theology, Sarah Sentilles offers an impassioned defense of life lived by peace and principle. It is a literary collage with an urgent hope at its core: that art might offer tools for remaking the world.
In Draw Your Weapons, Sentilles tells the true stories of Howard, a conscientious objector during World War II, and Miles, a former prison guard at Abu Ghraib, and in the process she challenges conventional thinking about how war is waged, witnessed, and resisted. The pacifist and the soldier both create art in response to war: Howard builds a violin; Miles paints portraits of detainees. With echoes of Susan Sontag and Maggie Nelson, Sentilles investigates images of violence from the era of slavery to the drone age. In doing so, she wrestles with some of our most profound questions: What does it take to inspire compassion? What impact can one person have? How should we respond to violence when it feels like it can’t be stopped?
Why we stand for the flag: Gen. Dempsey https://t.co/AA4DEzYRqH via @usatopinion
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) September 25, 2017
In the course of everyday life, there are very few opportunities for the people of the United States to come together, pause and reflect on the hope that is only possible with freedom and democracy. Our national anthem is a statement of respect for this hope, not a declaration that those present agree with everything our nation does or fails to do.More.
That’s why members of the military and other public servants love sports and why sports love them. As the 18th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I witnessed the public ritual of playing the national anthem at sporting events dozens of times and saw Americans rise above their own self interests and celebrate something that is greater than themselves. More recently, I was in Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics and stood with enormous pride as our flag was raised and the anthem played when outstanding athletes across a variety of sports were moved to tears by the honor of representing their country.
National anthem doesn't belong only to the military: Dan Carney Life presents plenty of opportunities for us to disagree with one another and seemingly fewer opportunities on which we agree. Standing together during the national anthem at sporting events should be one of those times when we agree, when we focus on the things that bind us together, even as we prepare to let our voices be heard in disagreement about which team is the better team...
Happy Fall! I’ll be in the weather center tracking your weekend forecast all night long. Join us live right now on @10News #SanDiegoWX pic.twitter.com/lf4OMdDt4t— Jennifer Delacruz (@10NewsJen) September 23, 2017
EIGHT tweets in two days about Trump's feelings about NFL/athletes. pic.twitter.com/l7ETBbiiKJ
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 24, 2017
Ana de Armas – Vogue España October 2017 https://t.co/f9ky7eHa3Z— Celeb Pictures 📸 (@celebrity_hive) September 20, 2017
