“They are some of the biggest names in the Republican national security firmament, veterans of past GOP administrations who say, if called upon by President-elect Donald Trump, they stand ready to serve their country again.
But their phones aren’t ringing. Their entreaties to Trump Tower in New York have mostly gone unanswered. In Trump world, these establishment all-stars say they are “PNG” — personae non gratae.
Their transgression was signing one or both of two public “Never Trump” letters during the campaign, declaring they would not vote for Trump and calling his candidacy a danger to the nation.
One letter, with 122 names, was published by War on the Rocks, a website devoted to national security commentary, during the primary season in March. The other, with 50 names, including some repeat signatories, was published by the New York Times during the general-election campaign in August.
Now, just days before Trump is sworn in as the nation’s 45th president, the letter signers fear they have been added to another document, this one private — a purported blacklist compiled by Trump’s political advisers.
“Before he won, the conversation was, ‘We really would love for you to change your mind and join us,’ ” Peter Feaver, a National Security Council special adviser under President George W. Bush, said of informal talks with Trump aides. Feaver, who signed both letters, added that, “Since he won . . . the conversation is, ‘There likely will be a blacklist of people who signed the letters who won’t themselves be eligible for a post.’ ””
———————
Finally someone gets it. This will change the song many are singing. Won’t take back your country’s criminal illegals? No aid for you! And it’s about time.
“A proposed law that would punish countries that refuse to take back their illegal immigrant criminals is two years too late to save Casey Chadwick, but the Texas congressman behind it figures it’s the least Washington can do.”
““The problem is hundreds of Americans are being robbed, assaulted, raped or murdered every year by criminal aliens who are then released back onto the streets because their countries of origins refuse to take them back,” Babin said. “I have personally met with a number of these victims, or if the victim is deceased, I have met with their families. It is heart-wrenching.”
———————-
“A House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in April documented that since 2013, 86,288 illegal immigrants have committed 231,074 crimes after being released from prison. Many of those illegal immigrants are ultimately deported, but some 2,166 who had served their time for various crimes were released last year when their home countries refused to take them back.
Babin’s bill would require the Department of Homeland Security report to Congress every three months the names of uncooperative countries. The federal government would then withhold foreign aid to those countries while the State Department would suspend travel visas.
Under President-elect Donald Trump, the bill faces “renewed interest” because Trump “has voiced his strong support for punishing countries that refuse to accept deportations,” Babin said.
The problem is “getting out of hand,” agreed Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.
There are now more than 20 countries that refuse to cooperate with the U.S., and more than 60 that make the process extremely difficult, Vaughan said.”
AJ @ 7:00 I saw that article yesterday and couldn’t bring myself to read it. It is the saddest part of the whole year. I would like to blame what happened on Yankee immigrants, but the problem is much deeper than that. As my wife has been telling me for years, “Our poor white trash are going bad.” I never wanted to believe her, but she was right. In his classic piece, Matt Walsh was as outraged as I am. Since Trump is quoted there is a language warning.
Here is a good place of agreement with Democrats and Trump. There is no reason we shouldn’t be able to work across the aisle to ‘repeal and replace’ the ACA:
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday pledged to change the way the federal government purchases prescription drugs, a dramatic warning to the drug industry that he is serious about keeping his campaign promises to address drug costs.
He gave the subject near-top billing in his first press conference as president-elect, slamming the pharmaceutical industry for overseas production and promising, in vague terms, to open up more price negotiations for medications.
AJ, immediate problem with the article is the map. The people of the South do not consider under any circumstance Maryland and Delaware to be part of the South. Under most circumstance they do not consider Kentucky and West Virginia part of the South. Florida and Virginia are on probation. The only thing saving them is that Virginia is the birthplace of Robert E. Lee and Florida gave us Tim Tebow. .
“In the face of continuing signs pointing down the road to fascism, we must not refuse any method of struggle. Of course we intent to resist, refuse, and revolt but there’s nothing wrong with a simple plain old boycott !”
KBells, I can confirm that you expressed the view of the vast majority of Southerners. I am unusual in that I never acknowledged the separate existence of West Virginia even as certain Germans never acknowledged the separate existence of East Germany.
This is just one of many things wrong with colleges today. They’d rather crank out community dis-organizers and SJWs than well educated, thinking adults. But what did you expect would happen when you let the 60’s hippies control education? It’s all about the protest now.
“On Friday, I posted a Quick Take about ‘New Civics’ based on a story from the Washington Times. New Civics is nothing more than an attempt to turn the study of civics away from government and citizenship and towards activism and protests.
It is essentially an attempt to further radicalize college students, as if they needed any help to do that.
Colleen Flaherty of Inside Higher Ed has written an in-depth article on the subject:
Report Warns of ‘New Civics,’ Seeks Requirement
A new report from the National Association of Scholars warns against the rise of what it calls “new civics” and recommends that legislators mandate a course in “traditional” American civics as a graduation requirement at all colleges and universities that receive public funding. “What we call the ‘new civics’ redefines civics as progressive political activism,” reads the 525-page report. “Rooted in the radical program of the 1960s’ New Left, the new civics presents itself as an up-to-date version of volunteerism and good works. Though camouflaged with soft rhetoric, the new civics, properly understood, is an effort to repurpose higher education.”
The report says that the alleged movement, above all, seeks to make students “enthusiastic supporters” of the “New Left’s dream of ‘fundamentally transforming’ America,” including by “decarbonizing the economy, massively redistributing wealth, intensifying identity group grievance, curtailing the free market, expanding government bureaucracy, elevating international ‘norms’ over American constitutional law and disparaging our common history and ideals.” The report asserts that “service learning” initiatives at colleges seek to teach students that a “good citizen is a radical activist, and it puts political activism at the center of everything that students do in college, including academic study, extracurricular pursuits and off-campus ventures.””
“This short excerpt explains what it’s all about:
New Civics builds on “service-learning,” which is an effort to divert students from the classroom to vocational training as community activists. By rebranding itself as “civic engagement,” servicelearning succeeded in capturing nearly all the funding that formerly supported the old civics. In practice this means that instead of teaching college students the foundations of law, liberty, and self-government, colleges teach students how to organize protests, occupy buildings, and stage demonstrations. These are indeed forms of “civic engagement,” but they are far from being a genuine substitute for learning how to be a full participant in our republic.
New Civics has still further ambitions. Its proponents want to build it into every college class regardless of subject. The effort continues without so far drawing much critical attention from the public.
This is nothing more than an attempt to train a new generation of community organizers.”
That’s what I love about you Southerners. You just assume everyone wants to be considered part of The South. 🙂
And as for Delaware and Maryland, they’re all yours…. 🙂
But we would be willing to call DE and MD the DMZ, and just leave them in limbo. The North is really only PA and above anyway. Sadly for us that includes NY and NJ. But Virginia is yours too, along with DC. No, really…. we insist. 🙂
I’m betting Maryland and Delaware as well as DC would be insulted to be called southerners. My pastor is from Kentucky. He’s about as southern as Bernie Sanders. Never been hunting, won’t eat turnip greens, funny accent. Poor West Virginia, No one wants them. (dang, now the song Country Road is back in my head)
I can’t imagine Kentucky not being part of the South. But I never have considered Texas part of the South, either. It’s Southwest, and that’s a whole different breed.
Ricky, I wasn’t saying Texas wasn’t part of the Confederacy, just that it has more of the independent mindset of the Southwest than the gentility etc. of the South. I grew up in Arizona, and that’s a compliment for your state. I lived in the South for years, my parents both had some roots there and one of my brothers was born in Kentucky and one in Texas, three of my siblings are still there (plus one in Texas); I could gladly spend the rest of my life in the South except for my husband and his family being here. But I most “identify” with the Southwest in terms of admiration and what I’d choose if I could. (Not that I’d want to live in Phoenix now, so in reality I’m not a Southwesterner anymore. But if my husband chose to move to Texas, or to Tucson, I wouldn’t fuss.)
It’s probable that everything the Blaze said is true (@7:10).
Point is, there is no benefit now in telling us how bad Trump is.
Tell us how good Hillary was.
I was for everyone else before him, but when it came down to the final choice, I had to vote for Trump.
A friend of a Facebook friend claims that 17 republicans skipped Obama’s inauguration. I can’t find anything to back that up. I suspect he made it up, but these are the type of folks who would accuse me of calling them lairs if I ask for a source. Anyone ever heard that?
So Obama has been whining about WikiLeaks, hackers and Russians stealing secrets, yet he just pardoned a traitor who stole state secrets and released them to WikiLeaks. And a General who leaked info. Go figure.
On the same day that the Chinese President emerged as the leading advocate for the trade policies that have generated the greatest reduction in poverty in recorded history, the new US leader, who has threatened to return to protectionism, continues a Twitter War with an ancient Civil Rights icon.
John Lewis said about my inauguration, "It will be the first one that I've missed." WRONG (or lie)! He boycotted Bush 43 also because he…
Among the many hard lessons of the 2016 presidential election, perhaps the most salient is the erosion of Americans’ confidence in the institutions of national life. The election of Donald Trump was a rebuke not just to the leaders of the Republican Party but also to the entire political establishment.
At the same time, Trump is not immune to this erosion of confidence. He lost the popular vote, and will take the oath of office on Friday with the highest unfavorable ratings of any president in the past 35 years.
This is a big problem. Our political system only works the way it’s supposed to if we invest it with a measure of confidence. That’s why Georgia Rep. John Lewis’ boycott of Trump’s inauguration is so reckless and short-sighted. Over the long weekend marking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Lewis told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd he won’t attend the inauguration because he believes Trump is illegitimate, and that “the Russians participated in helping this man get elected.” …
… Given the stakes, it’s not sufficient simply to say that what goes around comes around, that Trump questioned Obama’s legitimacy and now he’s getting a taste of his own medicine. Lewis and his cadre of Democratic lawmakers believe they’re taking a principled stand for democracy by boycotting the inauguration. In fact, they’re undermining it. No matter how much you disagree with the president himself, the office of the presidency and the peaceful transfer of power are greater than any one man, and they deserve unambiguous endorsement by our elected officials—in fact, it’s their sworn duty.
Our Founding Fathers knew what a pernicious influence rank partisanship could be on the fledgling republic. In his farewell address, George Washington warned against what he called “the spirit of party,” and urged his countrymen to “discourage and restrain it.” Such a spirit, he said, “agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.” …
______________________________
His small mindedness and easily distracted attention span will leave America vulnerable in world affairs. Meanwhile at home the Republicans will find out how hard it is to undo Obama’s work. It will be interesting to see how they do on the health care file. It will be more difficult than they think.
I read the article, HRW. Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton create a pretty low bar. LBJ was the most successful at pushing through liberal legislation. Clinton would be the one who could most easily have won a third term if he had been allowed to run, even despite the scandals.
Obama generally kept his head during the worst economic crisis in 70 years. Obamacare took a very bad situation and made it slightly worse. After 2010, Obama was largely neutered by a Republican Congress. His foreign policy turned out to be a lot like Little Bush. To quote Trump, he poked a stick in a couple of beehives.
DJ, I really don’t think Americans’ confidence in our government depends on whether a single Democrat attends the Inauguration. It does depend on whether Trump starts acting like an adult or continues to behave as a spoiled 8 year old. Trump has created a very low bar for himself. If he can show a small amount of maturity and a little competence, the folks in the middle will give him a chance. The partisan Dems will hate him no matter what happens, and as he said, his supporters will be with him even if he shoots someone on 5th Avenue.
HRW, You are right about healthcare. It would take a dictator 15-20 years to convert the US system into something as efficient as the Dutch system. There may be small improvements, but the system will continue to be tweaked for years as it becomes ever more expensive. AARP, the Docs and Big Pharma will prevent any real reforms.
“Once the parade winds down and the spectators leave the National Mall on Friday, incoming President Donald J. Trump is set to use his first hours in office to reverse some of his predecessor’s highest-profile policies.
Even before he begins dismantling the Affordable Care Act and building a wall on the border with Mexico, Trump has promised to immediately roll back executive actions signed by President Barack Obama to shield immigrants from deportation and impose a hiring freeze on the federal government.
Conservative and business groups hope the Republican goes even further by repealing a number of Obama-era orders and agency regulations that affect how much federal contractors must pay employees and whether they must disclose labor law violations.
“I think his priority will be to roll back some of the regulatory executive orders that have just crippled our business expansion,” said Rep. Andy Harris, a Baltimore County Republican.
“Rolling back rules and regulations can take longer,” he added, “but hopefully they will get started quickly.””
A few days ago someone posted the latest O’Keefe Project Veritas video which purportedly showed left wing activists being offered and accepting payment to disrupt the inauguration. Turns out, the left wing activist knew it was Project Veritas and recorded the conversation themselves. They recognized the woman who approached them as the same women who tried to infiltrate the Sanders and Clinton campaigns and decided to tape her. Here’s their side of the story;
“A walker in Washington came across two guns in a violin case along the Potomac River on Wednesday, leading police to find several other weapons stashed in the area, officials said.
U.S. Park Police said a woman walking in the woods near the C&O Canal, which runs along the river, found the case. When law enforcement officers arrived, they found more guns and ammunition — some in pails, others in plastic garbage bags.
“At this point, we don’t know how they got there, why they’re here or when they got here,” police spokeswoman Sgt. Anna Rose said.
She said officers found a variety of weapons, including long guns and pistols.
The D.C. police bomb squad was conducting a sweep of the area.”
“President Barack Obama has granted clemency to Oscar Lopez-Rivera who has been in federal prison since 1981.
Lopez-Rivera grew up in Chicago and was convicted of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government when he was a member of the Puerto Rican independence group FALN.
Depending on who’s doing the talking, Lopez-Rivera was either a dangerous terrorist who used booby trap bombs and other weapons or he was a freedom fighter who became a political prisoner since being convicted of seditious conspiracy and on weapons charges.
Under Lopez-Rivera, the FALN, headquartered in Chicago and New York City, planted more than 130 bombs in U.S. cities beginning in 1974.
The group’s goal was Puerto Rican independence and destabilizing what they called, “Yankee capitalist monopoly. Lopez-Rivera convicted and sentenced to 55-years, proclaimed himself an enemy of the U.S. government.
His Chicago north side apartment was the bombing-making headquarters for the FALN. The FBI found 10 pounds of dynamite and blasting caps in Lopez-Rivera’s apartment.”
“The Obama administration signed a law-enforcement agreement with Cuba Monday that doesn’t call for the return of U.S. fugitives, including former Black Panther Joanne Chesimard, who is wanted for killing a New Jersey police officer.
The pact was signed by Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the de facto U.S. ambassador in Havana, and the Cuban Interior minister Julio César Gandarilla. It covers a broad range of law-enforcement topics, such as counternarcotics operations.
Also present at the signing was White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, who played a key role in forging Mr. Obama’s policy of restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba in 2014.
The agreement does not include a return of U.S. fugitives that Cuba has harbored, including Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur. Convicted of murder for the shooting death of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster in 1973, she escaped prison in 1979 and received asylum from Cuba. The omission of fugitives from the agreement was first reported by USA Today.
Cuba’s shielding of Chesimard and other U.S. fugitives, including Puerto Rican nationalist William Morales, wanted for the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in New York City that killed four and wounded 50, has been a source of friction between the two governments for decades.”
Health care may be beyond fixing at this stage. But someone’s gotta try. The Republicans will probably take the fall on it ultimately if it can’t be repaired.
Brit Hume, in an interview last night with Tucker Carlson, I believe, said he’d never seen a partisan divide as deep as the one that exists now in the U.S. It’s disconcerting.
Let’s see what Trump does — he is more of a pragmatist and could surprise us by being able to work across the aisle. Somehow I’m hoping we’ve hit bottom in this country with all the rancor. How could it get any worse?
Interesting also to listen to Geraldo Rivera on the radio discussing his 4-decade long friendship with Trump, though he says they don’t agree on politics. He described him as gracious and a good friend, attentive to others — we can’t assume we *know* someone we don’t really know.
Granted, his behavior in the campaign has been troublesome, to say the least. But I do think there’s another side to him (displayed in his appointments, perhaps?) that people aren’t seeing.
I have very mixed feelings about him but am one of those who think the country needs to give it a chance. And inaugurations are a time when partisanship simply should be set aside, if only for a day, to recognized the common interests of the republic.
Next day, we can go at it again. But organizing boycotts I think is a sad and poor idea. Sorry to see it coming to this. 😦
If I were to become a politician, I would attend these types of occasions for my opponents as good manners is necessary even when we disagree. Even Bush Jr., despite the controversy and the inability of Florida to manage an election, I would show up. However, with Trump, I would not grant him the same respect simply based on his prior treatment of women. The man should be arrested for sexual assault and voyeurism not made president of the United States.
By attending his inauguration you create the impression that Trump is a normal politician. He is not. He is a sexual predator, failed businessmen, notorious for not paying contractors, has racist tendencies, and has more regard of Putin than US intelligence services. By attending, you normalize him. He should not be normalized.
But hwesseli, Hillary shouldn’t have been normalized either, yet had she won, there wouldn’t be all this hyperventilating. Republicans would just figure they lost, and that’s life. But when Bush Jr. won, there was all this nonsense about “Not my president” and unfortunately they figured out it works, so they’re doing it again, only more so. Obama wasn’t legally eligible to run for president (his father not being a citizen meant he was not a natural-born citizen), and he’s an evil man, but anyone who questioned him was assumed to be racist, not assumed to be someone with legitimate differences with him. The two sides have different rules for what is acceptable public discourse.
Someone in my Chicago church got invited (for reasons I didn’t know) to Bill Clinton’s second inauguration, and he went. I never said anything, but I thought I simply wouldn’t have gone. Clinton was not respectable; it was not an honor to be invited. Yet had I worked in D.C., I would have gone as part of my job. I’d go to Trump’s as part of my job, too, not as a special honor. As a private citizen, I’d decline to go. A person in government office no more should be using his office to express private opinions than a reporter should.
Because ACA has been such a runaway success? There may be elements that will be kept, as Trump has already signaled, but it was pushed through unilaterally and has run into major problems
DJ, Rancor? How can it get worse? Just stay tuned for the next four years. It is going to get much worse.
Every day the Democrats and the mainstream media are going to be taking shots at Trump (and a number of them will be legitimate). Every morning, President ThinSkin will be firing back on Twitter.
Wandering Views 
Awwwww…….. poor things. Not.
As they say, elections have consequences…….. when you back the wrong horse. Did they really think he’d give them jobs after the way they treated him?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/never-trump-national-security-republicans-fear-they-have-been-blacklisted/2017/01/16/a2fadf54-d9a3-11e6-b8b2-cb5164beba6b_story.html?utm_term=.3e24a54b4f17#comments
“They are some of the biggest names in the Republican national security firmament, veterans of past GOP administrations who say, if called upon by President-elect Donald Trump, they stand ready to serve their country again.
But their phones aren’t ringing. Their entreaties to Trump Tower in New York have mostly gone unanswered. In Trump world, these establishment all-stars say they are “PNG” — personae non gratae.
Their transgression was signing one or both of two public “Never Trump” letters during the campaign, declaring they would not vote for Trump and calling his candidacy a danger to the nation.
One letter, with 122 names, was published by War on the Rocks, a website devoted to national security commentary, during the primary season in March. The other, with 50 names, including some repeat signatories, was published by the New York Times during the general-election campaign in August.
Now, just days before Trump is sworn in as the nation’s 45th president, the letter signers fear they have been added to another document, this one private — a purported blacklist compiled by Trump’s political advisers.
“Before he won, the conversation was, ‘We really would love for you to change your mind and join us,’ ” Peter Feaver, a National Security Council special adviser under President George W. Bush, said of informal talks with Trump aides. Feaver, who signed both letters, added that, “Since he won . . . the conversation is, ‘There likely will be a blacklist of people who signed the letters who won’t themselves be eligible for a post.’ ””
———————
Too bad, so sad.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Still upset over the election results?
Blame The South. 🙂
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/01/16/how_trump_won_the_south_132796.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
Finally someone gets it. This will change the song many are singing. Won’t take back your country’s criminal illegals? No aid for you! And it’s about time.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/16/bill-would-cut-off-aid-to-countries-that-dont-take-back-their-illegal-immigrant-criminals.html
“A proposed law that would punish countries that refuse to take back their illegal immigrant criminals is two years too late to save Casey Chadwick, but the Texas congressman behind it figures it’s the least Washington can do.”
““The problem is hundreds of Americans are being robbed, assaulted, raped or murdered every year by criminal aliens who are then released back onto the streets because their countries of origins refuse to take them back,” Babin said. “I have personally met with a number of these victims, or if the victim is deceased, I have met with their families. It is heart-wrenching.”
———————-
“A House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in April documented that since 2013, 86,288 illegal immigrants have committed 231,074 crimes after being released from prison. Many of those illegal immigrants are ultimately deported, but some 2,166 who had served their time for various crimes were released last year when their home countries refused to take them back.
Babin’s bill would require the Department of Homeland Security report to Congress every three months the names of uncooperative countries. The federal government would then withhold foreign aid to those countries while the State Department would suspend travel visas.
Under President-elect Donald Trump, the bill faces “renewed interest” because Trump “has voiced his strong support for punishing countries that refuse to accept deportations,” Babin said.
The problem is “getting out of hand,” agreed Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.
There are now more than 20 countries that refuse to cooperate with the U.S., and more than 60 that make the process extremely difficult, Vaughan said.”
LikeLike
AJ @ 7:00 I saw that article yesterday and couldn’t bring myself to read it. It is the saddest part of the whole year. I would like to blame what happened on Yankee immigrants, but the problem is much deeper than that. As my wife has been telling me for years, “Our poor white trash are going bad.” I never wanted to believe her, but she was right. In his classic piece, Matt Walsh was as outraged as I am. Since Trump is quoted there is a language warning.
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/if-we-lived-in-a-truly-christian-nation-donald-trump-would-not-be-winning/
LikeLike
Here is a good place of agreement with Democrats and Trump. There is no reason we shouldn’t be able to work across the aisle to ‘repeal and replace’ the ACA:
https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/11/trump-drug-prices-news-conference/
LikeLike
Two movies (both set in the desert) show the cultural rot that has taken place between 1949 and 2016:
LikeLike
” As my wife has been telling me for years, “Our poor white trash are going bad.” ”
Yeah, that’s what my dog tells me too. But my thinking is, if you keep putting your head in the garbage, you pretty much get what you deserve. ;–)
LikeLiked by 1 person
By ignoring unpleasant current events, I found time to work on my list of the prettiest actresses to star in movies set in Paris.
LikeLike
I see that at least one call has already gone out to impeach Trump before he’s even been sworn in. 🙂
The left is on fire and it’s gonna be a wild ride (said with equally mixed feelings of both fascination and despair.)
LikeLiked by 3 people
Impeach away. I pretty much only voted for him because I liked Pence.
LikeLiked by 2 people
AJ, immediate problem with the article is the map. The people of the South do not consider under any circumstance Maryland and Delaware to be part of the South. Under most circumstance they do not consider Kentucky and West Virginia part of the South. Florida and Virginia are on probation. The only thing saving them is that Virginia is the birthplace of Robert E. Lee and Florida gave us Tim Tebow. .
LikeLiked by 3 people
From one of the emails I received today:
“In the face of continuing signs pointing down the road to fascism, we must not refuse any method of struggle. Of course we intent to resist, refuse, and revolt but there’s nothing wrong with a simple plain old boycott !”
LikeLike
KBells, I can confirm that you expressed the view of the vast majority of Southerners. I am unusual in that I never acknowledged the separate existence of West Virginia even as certain Germans never acknowledged the separate existence of East Germany.
LikeLike
I might add that many of my neighbors have also put North Carolina on probation. However, I believe that Chas functions as that state’s Lee or Tebow.
LikeLiked by 4 people
This is just one of many things wrong with colleges today. They’d rather crank out community dis-organizers and SJWs than well educated, thinking adults. But what did you expect would happen when you let the 60’s hippies control education? It’s all about the protest now.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/01/new-civics-is-federally-funded-left-wing-indoctrination-at-colleges/
“On Friday, I posted a Quick Take about ‘New Civics’ based on a story from the Washington Times. New Civics is nothing more than an attempt to turn the study of civics away from government and citizenship and towards activism and protests.
It is essentially an attempt to further radicalize college students, as if they needed any help to do that.
Colleen Flaherty of Inside Higher Ed has written an in-depth article on the subject:
Report Warns of ‘New Civics,’ Seeks Requirement
A new report from the National Association of Scholars warns against the rise of what it calls “new civics” and recommends that legislators mandate a course in “traditional” American civics as a graduation requirement at all colleges and universities that receive public funding. “What we call the ‘new civics’ redefines civics as progressive political activism,” reads the 525-page report. “Rooted in the radical program of the 1960s’ New Left, the new civics presents itself as an up-to-date version of volunteerism and good works. Though camouflaged with soft rhetoric, the new civics, properly understood, is an effort to repurpose higher education.”
The report says that the alleged movement, above all, seeks to make students “enthusiastic supporters” of the “New Left’s dream of ‘fundamentally transforming’ America,” including by “decarbonizing the economy, massively redistributing wealth, intensifying identity group grievance, curtailing the free market, expanding government bureaucracy, elevating international ‘norms’ over American constitutional law and disparaging our common history and ideals.” The report asserts that “service learning” initiatives at colleges seek to teach students that a “good citizen is a radical activist, and it puts political activism at the center of everything that students do in college, including academic study, extracurricular pursuits and off-campus ventures.””
“This short excerpt explains what it’s all about:
New Civics builds on “service-learning,” which is an effort to divert students from the classroom to vocational training as community activists. By rebranding itself as “civic engagement,” servicelearning succeeded in capturing nearly all the funding that formerly supported the old civics. In practice this means that instead of teaching college students the foundations of law, liberty, and self-government, colleges teach students how to organize protests, occupy buildings, and stage demonstrations. These are indeed forms of “civic engagement,” but they are far from being a genuine substitute for learning how to be a full participant in our republic.
New Civics has still further ambitions. Its proponents want to build it into every college class regardless of subject. The effort continues without so far drawing much critical attention from the public.
This is nothing more than an attempt to train a new generation of community organizers.”
LikeLike
That’s what I love about you Southerners. You just assume everyone wants to be considered part of The South. 🙂
And as for Delaware and Maryland, they’re all yours…. 🙂
But we would be willing to call DE and MD the DMZ, and just leave them in limbo. The North is really only PA and above anyway. Sadly for us that includes NY and NJ. But Virginia is yours too, along with DC. No, really…. we insist. 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m betting Maryland and Delaware as well as DC would be insulted to be called southerners. My pastor is from Kentucky. He’s about as southern as Bernie Sanders. Never been hunting, won’t eat turnip greens, funny accent. Poor West Virginia, No one wants them. (dang, now the song Country Road is back in my head)
LikeLiked by 3 people
I can’t imagine Kentucky not being part of the South. But I never have considered Texas part of the South, either. It’s Southwest, and that’s a whole different breed.
LikeLike
Good job, AJ @ 12:35! You capitalized both the ‘S’ in ‘South’ and the ‘T’ in ‘The’.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Uh-oh! Heresy @ 1:36.
LikeLike
http://warriorsofthelonestar.blogspot.com/2011/01/lees-texans-at-wilderness.html?m=1
LikeLike
Ricky, I wasn’t saying Texas wasn’t part of the Confederacy, just that it has more of the independent mindset of the Southwest than the gentility etc. of the South. I grew up in Arizona, and that’s a compliment for your state. I lived in the South for years, my parents both had some roots there and one of my brothers was born in Kentucky and one in Texas, three of my siblings are still there (plus one in Texas); I could gladly spend the rest of my life in the South except for my husband and his family being here. But I most “identify” with the Southwest in terms of admiration and what I’d choose if I could. (Not that I’d want to live in Phoenix now, so in reality I’m not a Southwesterner anymore. But if my husband chose to move to Texas, or to Tucson, I wouldn’t fuss.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Heresy Tribunal dismissed; explanation accepted.😀
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s probable that everything the Blaze said is true (@7:10).
Point is, there is no benefit now in telling us how bad Trump is.
Tell us how good Hillary was.
I was for everyone else before him, but when it came down to the final choice, I had to vote for Trump.
I would do it again.
LikeLike
A friend of a Facebook friend claims that 17 republicans skipped Obama’s inauguration. I can’t find anything to back that up. I suspect he made it up, but these are the type of folks who would accuse me of calling them lairs if I ask for a source. Anyone ever heard that?
LikeLike
I heard 3-4, most had ‘other engagement’ type reasons. I don’t remember any protests surrounding the Obama inaugurations
I will say that Trump may benefit from low expectations
LikeLike
What a hypocrite.
So Obama has been whining about WikiLeaks, hackers and Russians stealing secrets, yet he just pardoned a traitor who stole state secrets and released them to WikiLeaks. And a General who leaked info. Go figure.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38659068
LikeLiked by 2 people
As predicted, as the US steps away from global economic leadership, China steps forward.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/01/17/davos-2017-breaking-news-updates-world-economic-forum-begins/
The contrast could not be more dramatic.
LikeLike
On the same day that the Chinese President emerged as the leading advocate for the trade policies that have generated the greatest reduction in poverty in recorded history, the new US leader, who has threatened to return to protectionism, continues a Twitter War with an ancient Civil Rights icon.
LikeLike
On the harm done by boycotting inaugurations
_________________________________
Among the many hard lessons of the 2016 presidential election, perhaps the most salient is the erosion of Americans’ confidence in the institutions of national life. The election of Donald Trump was a rebuke not just to the leaders of the Republican Party but also to the entire political establishment.
At the same time, Trump is not immune to this erosion of confidence. He lost the popular vote, and will take the oath of office on Friday with the highest unfavorable ratings of any president in the past 35 years.
This is a big problem. Our political system only works the way it’s supposed to if we invest it with a measure of confidence. That’s why Georgia Rep. John Lewis’ boycott of Trump’s inauguration is so reckless and short-sighted. Over the long weekend marking Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Lewis told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd he won’t attend the inauguration because he believes Trump is illegitimate, and that “the Russians participated in helping this man get elected.” …
… Given the stakes, it’s not sufficient simply to say that what goes around comes around, that Trump questioned Obama’s legitimacy and now he’s getting a taste of his own medicine. Lewis and his cadre of Democratic lawmakers believe they’re taking a principled stand for democracy by boycotting the inauguration. In fact, they’re undermining it. No matter how much you disagree with the president himself, the office of the presidency and the peaceful transfer of power are greater than any one man, and they deserve unambiguous endorsement by our elected officials—in fact, it’s their sworn duty.
Our Founding Fathers knew what a pernicious influence rank partisanship could be on the fledgling republic. In his farewell address, George Washington warned against what he called “the spirit of party,” and urged his countrymen to “discourage and restrain it.” Such a spirit, he said, “agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.” …
______________________________
LikeLike
His small mindedness and easily distracted attention span will leave America vulnerable in world affairs. Meanwhile at home the Republicans will find out how hard it is to undo Obama’s work. It will be interesting to see how they do on the health care file. It will be more difficult than they think.
Interesting thoughts
LikeLike
I read the article, HRW. Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton create a pretty low bar. LBJ was the most successful at pushing through liberal legislation. Clinton would be the one who could most easily have won a third term if he had been allowed to run, even despite the scandals.
Obama generally kept his head during the worst economic crisis in 70 years. Obamacare took a very bad situation and made it slightly worse. After 2010, Obama was largely neutered by a Republican Congress. His foreign policy turned out to be a lot like Little Bush. To quote Trump, he poked a stick in a couple of beehives.
LikeLike
DJ, I really don’t think Americans’ confidence in our government depends on whether a single Democrat attends the Inauguration. It does depend on whether Trump starts acting like an adult or continues to behave as a spoiled 8 year old. Trump has created a very low bar for himself. If he can show a small amount of maturity and a little competence, the folks in the middle will give him a chance. The partisan Dems will hate him no matter what happens, and as he said, his supporters will be with him even if he shoots someone on 5th Avenue.
LikeLike
HRW, You are right about healthcare. It would take a dictator 15-20 years to convert the US system into something as efficient as the Dutch system. There may be small improvements, but the system will continue to be tweaked for years as it becomes ever more expensive. AARP, the Docs and Big Pharma will prevent any real reforms.
LikeLike
HRW,
“Meanwhile at home the Republicans will find out how hard it is to undo Obama’s work.”
You forget Obama ruled largely by executive order, and his “work” can easily be undone by same.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-set-to-make-major-policy-changes-in-first-hours-of-presidency/ar-AAlXQgT?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U452DHP
“Once the parade winds down and the spectators leave the National Mall on Friday, incoming President Donald J. Trump is set to use his first hours in office to reverse some of his predecessor’s highest-profile policies.
Even before he begins dismantling the Affordable Care Act and building a wall on the border with Mexico, Trump has promised to immediately roll back executive actions signed by President Barack Obama to shield immigrants from deportation and impose a hiring freeze on the federal government.
Conservative and business groups hope the Republican goes even further by repealing a number of Obama-era orders and agency regulations that affect how much federal contractors must pay employees and whether they must disclose labor law violations.
“I think his priority will be to roll back some of the regulatory executive orders that have just crippled our business expansion,” said Rep. Andy Harris, a Baltimore County Republican.
“Rolling back rules and regulations can take longer,” he added, “but hopefully they will get started quickly.””
LikeLike
A few days ago someone posted the latest O’Keefe Project Veritas video which purportedly showed left wing activists being offered and accepting payment to disrupt the inauguration. Turns out, the left wing activist knew it was Project Veritas and recorded the conversation themselves. They recognized the woman who approached them as the same women who tried to infiltrate the Sanders and Clinton campaigns and decided to tape her. Here’s their side of the story;
LikeLike
Hopefully this isn’t related to the planned inauguration protests.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/01/04/guns-in-violin-case-other-weapons-found-along-potomac-in-dc.html
“A walker in Washington came across two guns in a violin case along the Potomac River on Wednesday, leading police to find several other weapons stashed in the area, officials said.
U.S. Park Police said a woman walking in the woods near the C&O Canal, which runs along the river, found the case. When law enforcement officers arrived, they found more guns and ammunition — some in pails, others in plastic garbage bags.
“At this point, we don’t know how they got there, why they’re here or when they got here,” police spokeswoman Sgt. Anna Rose said.
She said officers found a variety of weapons, including long guns and pistols.
The D.C. police bomb squad was conducting a sweep of the area.”
LikeLike
Obama once again sides with a terrorist.
http://abc7chicago.com/news/obama-grants-clemency-to-convicted-conspirator-oscar-lopez-rivera/1706988/
“President Barack Obama has granted clemency to Oscar Lopez-Rivera who has been in federal prison since 1981.
Lopez-Rivera grew up in Chicago and was convicted of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government when he was a member of the Puerto Rican independence group FALN.
Depending on who’s doing the talking, Lopez-Rivera was either a dangerous terrorist who used booby trap bombs and other weapons or he was a freedom fighter who became a political prisoner since being convicted of seditious conspiracy and on weapons charges.
Under Lopez-Rivera, the FALN, headquartered in Chicago and New York City, planted more than 130 bombs in U.S. cities beginning in 1974.
The group’s goal was Puerto Rican independence and destabilizing what they called, “Yankee capitalist monopoly. Lopez-Rivera convicted and sentenced to 55-years, proclaimed himself an enemy of the U.S. government.
His Chicago north side apartment was the bombing-making headquarters for the FALN. The FBI found 10 pounds of dynamite and blasting caps in Lopez-Rivera’s apartment.”
LikeLike
Oh he’s on a roll now……
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/16/obama-sends-aide-cuba-sign-agreement/
“The Obama administration signed a law-enforcement agreement with Cuba Monday that doesn’t call for the return of U.S. fugitives, including former Black Panther Joanne Chesimard, who is wanted for killing a New Jersey police officer.
The pact was signed by Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the de facto U.S. ambassador in Havana, and the Cuban Interior minister Julio César Gandarilla. It covers a broad range of law-enforcement topics, such as counternarcotics operations.
Also present at the signing was White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, who played a key role in forging Mr. Obama’s policy of restoring diplomatic ties with Cuba in 2014.
The agreement does not include a return of U.S. fugitives that Cuba has harbored, including Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur. Convicted of murder for the shooting death of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster in 1973, she escaped prison in 1979 and received asylum from Cuba. The omission of fugitives from the agreement was first reported by USA Today.
Cuba’s shielding of Chesimard and other U.S. fugitives, including Puerto Rican nationalist William Morales, wanted for the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in New York City that killed four and wounded 50, has been a source of friction between the two governments for decades.”
LikeLike
10 more terrorists released from Gitmo too.
I guess Mumia Abu-Jamal and Manson are the only two he hasn’t commuted/released/pardoned.
Well, besides Hillary. 🙂
LikeLike
Health care may be beyond fixing at this stage. But someone’s gotta try. The Republicans will probably take the fall on it ultimately if it can’t be repaired.
Brit Hume, in an interview last night with Tucker Carlson, I believe, said he’d never seen a partisan divide as deep as the one that exists now in the U.S. It’s disconcerting.
Let’s see what Trump does — he is more of a pragmatist and could surprise us by being able to work across the aisle. Somehow I’m hoping we’ve hit bottom in this country with all the rancor. How could it get any worse?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh there’s more to be pardoned — here’s one — http://www.freeleonard.org/case/
LikeLike
Interesting also to listen to Geraldo Rivera on the radio discussing his 4-decade long friendship with Trump, though he says they don’t agree on politics. He described him as gracious and a good friend, attentive to others — we can’t assume we *know* someone we don’t really know.
Granted, his behavior in the campaign has been troublesome, to say the least. But I do think there’s another side to him (displayed in his appointments, perhaps?) that people aren’t seeing.
I have very mixed feelings about him but am one of those who think the country needs to give it a chance. And inaugurations are a time when partisanship simply should be set aside, if only for a day, to recognized the common interests of the republic.
Next day, we can go at it again. But organizing boycotts I think is a sad and poor idea. Sorry to see it coming to this. 😦
LikeLiked by 2 people
The Republicans will take the fall if they repeal the ACA without a viable replacement, which appears to be the case.
LikeLike
If I were to become a politician, I would attend these types of occasions for my opponents as good manners is necessary even when we disagree. Even Bush Jr., despite the controversy and the inability of Florida to manage an election, I would show up. However, with Trump, I would not grant him the same respect simply based on his prior treatment of women. The man should be arrested for sexual assault and voyeurism not made president of the United States.
LikeLiked by 1 person
By attending his inauguration you create the impression that Trump is a normal politician. He is not. He is a sexual predator, failed businessmen, notorious for not paying contractors, has racist tendencies, and has more regard of Putin than US intelligence services. By attending, you normalize him. He should not be normalized.
LikeLiked by 1 person
But hwesseli, Hillary shouldn’t have been normalized either, yet had she won, there wouldn’t be all this hyperventilating. Republicans would just figure they lost, and that’s life. But when Bush Jr. won, there was all this nonsense about “Not my president” and unfortunately they figured out it works, so they’re doing it again, only more so. Obama wasn’t legally eligible to run for president (his father not being a citizen meant he was not a natural-born citizen), and he’s an evil man, but anyone who questioned him was assumed to be racist, not assumed to be someone with legitimate differences with him. The two sides have different rules for what is acceptable public discourse.
Someone in my Chicago church got invited (for reasons I didn’t know) to Bill Clinton’s second inauguration, and he went. I never said anything, but I thought I simply wouldn’t have gone. Clinton was not respectable; it was not an honor to be invited. Yet had I worked in D.C., I would have gone as part of my job. I’d go to Trump’s as part of my job, too, not as a special honor. As a private citizen, I’d decline to go. A person in government office no more should be using his office to express private opinions than a reporter should.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Because ACA has been such a runaway success? There may be elements that will be kept, as Trump has already signaled, but it was pushed through unilaterally and has run into major problems
LikeLike
DJ, Rancor? How can it get worse? Just stay tuned for the next four years. It is going to get much worse.
Every day the Democrats and the mainstream media are going to be taking shots at Trump (and a number of them will be legitimate). Every morning, President ThinSkin will be firing back on Twitter.
LikeLike
HRW,
Wow. You nailed it. 😆
11:26 and 11:31 are the best Ricky Weaver impressions I’ve seen yet. 😆
LikeLike