Back to Basics

Hacker, with Claudia Dreifus, says tea partiers have it right on Common Core. See, “Who’s Minding the Schools?“:

By definition, America has never had a national education policy; this has indeed contributed to our country’s ambivalence on the subject. As it stands, the Common Core is currently getting hit mainly from the right. Tea Party-like groups have been gaining traction in opposition to the program, arguing that it is another intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans by a faceless elite. While we don’t often agree with the Tea Party, we’ve concluded that there’s more than a grain of truth to their concerns.

The anxiety that drives this criticism comes from the fact that a radical curriculum — one that has the potential to affect more than 50 million children and their parents — was introduced with hardly any public discussion. Americans know more about the events in Benghazi than they do about the Common Core.

RTWT.

And maybe there is some bipartisan push back. See my earlier piece, “The So-Called ‘Bipartisan Backlash’ Against Common Core.”

The lead letters at yesterday’s Los Angeles Times were in response to the coward David Blankenhorn’s recent op-ed, “What matters now about marriage.”

I’m surprised this one got past the editors:

I would say to Blankenhorn that what matters about marriage is the children. He fails to mention where the children fit into a gay marriage that has either two men or two women living together.

How does a child keep his or her head on straight when there is either no father or no mother? How does a female child living with two women learn the love and protection that only a man can provide? How does a male child living with two men learn the love and softness that only a woman can contribute?

How does the child, living in a lopsided environment, understand that a woman has her role in the marriage and that the man has his role in the marriage? It cannot be duplicated by two men or two women being married partners.

Lori Graham
Los Angeles

After all is said and done, this is the core argument that leftists can never rebut. All they can say is that it doesn’t matter, that people have a so-called “human” right to marry whomever they want. Screw the children. It’s all about the homosexual narcissists themselves.

And all of this activism won’t end with same-sex marriage, because progressives are never satisfied with the status quo. The Kaitlyn Hunt saga demonstrates that reason and decency won’t stand in the way of 100 percent license for homosexuals to do whatever they please. See, “The #FreeKate Meltdown Continues,” and “Local PFLAG: ‘The Cry of Discrimination …Does Not Seem to Apply’ in Hunt Case.”

At I’m41, “Pair of Berkeley Lesbian Lunatics Putting 11-Year-Old Son on Hormone Blocking Treatment to Make Him Their Daughter.”

Also at Victory Girls, “Lesbian Parents Put Their Eight-Year-Old Boy Through a Sex Change“:

Regardless of whether or not a sex change actually changes your gender (here’s a hint: it doesn’t), if an adult wants to choose to mutilate their genitals and live their life as a member of the opposite sex, then whatever. Go for it. You’re an adult, it’s your decision, I may not agree or understand, but it’s your life and your body. The difference here, however, is that this is a child. A child cannot understand the potential long-term consequences of their actions. A child cannot consent to hormone therapy and understand the health risks they could be taking. A child cannot understand that they are choosing to give up any chance of a normal childhood and adolescence. A child cannot think long-term, they cannot understand consequences of their actions, and therefore cannot make such a huge, life-changing decision as getting a sex change.

This isn’t just an example of poor parenting — it’s parents with an agenda to push, acting it out on their defenseless child who ends up being nothing more than a social experiment to their delusional parents.

Remember, for the leftards, if it feels good do it! (No matter whom you destroy in the process.)

From Douglas Murray, at Britain’s Standpoint, “Census That Revealed a Troubling Future“:

To study the results of the latest census is to stare at one unalterable conclusion: mass immigration has altered our country completely. It has become a radically different place, and London has become a foreign country. In 23 of London’s 33 boroughs “white Britons” are now in a minority. A spokesman for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) hailed this as “diversity”.

Of course there are numerous claims as to how it all occurred. One — made in 2009 by the former Labour adviser Andrew Neather — is that Tony Blair’s government wilfully aimed to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity” and create what it unwisely took to be a new client class. Another theory, not running entirely counter to this, is that the whole thing was a bureaucratic cock-up which ran out of control under successive governments, only doing so spectacularly under New Labour.

Whatever the cause, the public response has been surprisingly uniform. There have been no significant or sustained outbreaks of racism or violence. Most of us feel absolutely no personal animosity towards immigrants. But — as poll after poll has shown — a majority do worry very much about what all this means for our country and its future. And they are right to worry. For nobody has any idea of where are we heading next.

RTWT.

RELATED: Video: “Gordon Brown ‘Bigot’ insult to Gillian Duffy.”

Well, I’m not the only one blogging about this.

Check Warner Todd Huston, at Wizbang:

Earlier this month the President of Emory University wrote a piece for the school magazine about the efficacy of compromise. By the 24th he was forced to apologize for the piece because he mentioned slavery fully in context in his piece. The faux outrage that his comments caused proved three things: that no one at Emory has any grasp of American history, that the professors at Emory University are morons, and that the student body are utterly unable to employ critical thinking.

The segment that upset everyone was utterly innocuous and cited properly in context by Wagner, without hate or racism. Unfortunately, logic and context isn’t what the race baiters of Emory University are interested in, sad to say.

President James Wagner’s piece was meant to extol the virtues of compromise and meant his piece to explain that this vaunted compromise was as American as Apple Pie, baseball, and the restl. Pursuant to that, Wagner wrote the following:

One instance of constitutional compromise was the agreement to count three-fifths of the slave population for purposes of state representation in Congress. Southern delegates wanted to count the whole slave population, which would have given the South greater influence over national policy. Northern delegates argued that slaves should not be counted at all, because they had no vote. As the price for achieving the ultimate aim of the Constitution—“to form a more perfect union”—the two sides compromised on this immediate issue of how to count slaves in the new nation. Pragmatic half-victories kept in view the higher aspiration of drawing the country more closely together.

Such as it is, this is correct, straight forward, pure fact. It has not a whiff of controversy to it. Well, it wouldn’t have a whiff of controversy if an intelligent, informed person were reading that excerpt, anyway.

Instead of intelligent people, however, we ended up with dolts like Emory history “professor” Leslie Harris, halfwits like “professor” Leroy Davis, and racebaiters like student Jovanna Jones.

The idiocy from Davis is typical of the taunts doled out to the hapless president. “The use of the Three-Fifths Compromise for any reason is unacceptable because, regardless of the context of the compromise, African-Americans see it simply as looking at black people as less than a human being,” he said in an open letter to President Wagner.

These people all view the three-fifths compromise in an entirely negative light without any thought as to what it actually meant.

Continue reading.

Well, I did mention teh stupied. See: “Emory President James Wagner’s ‘Contrition’.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that the economy’s doing surprisingly well, and that’s for sure, considering how the White House is doing everything it can to retard the recovery. See, “Economy Drives Market Rally: Jobs Report Propels Dow to Five-Year High as Earnings, Fed Policies Fuel Investor Confidence.”

And also at IBD, “GDP Decline Masks Strengthening Consumers, Business.”

I am watching the testimony today on Capitol Hill, and it’s objectively not the case that “Madame Secretary” is “wiping the floor with the Republicans who are trying to take her down.” But then, as we saw yesterday, progressives can only win debates by successful doublespeak and historical revisionism. Here’s Steve M’s early attempts to get it done for the Hillary and Democrats on the Benghazi clusterf-k, “THE BREITBART/O’KEEFE-IZATION OF AMERICAN POLITICS, PART MCMLXXVII“:

Now, sometimes these things never attain any more than shibboleth status — they’re secret codewords right-wingers use whenever they talk about a particular Antichrist of theirs. This will definitely attain that status — years from now, when Hillary publishes her memoirs or announces a run for president, folks on winger message boards will write “What difference does it make?” and not even bother to put the phrase in context, because all the like-minded readers will just know.

But sometimes these things do more damage. Sometimes they really do color how a story is covered outside the right-wing bubble. Will that happen this time? Will the wingers be able to turn this decontextualized soundbite into a deceptive sign of Secretary Clinton’s indifference?

This is an Andrew Breitbart/James O’Keefe tactic, but its use is not limited to O’Keefe and the carriers of the Breitbart torch — this is a mainstream GOP tactic. The entire party and all its coat-holders are on board.

I can’t believe how stupid this is. It won’t be just the “deranged” right-wing Breitbart/O’Keefe-bots trotting out the “what difference does it make?” soundbite all night. Every single network will air it because it’s a Michael Kinsley gaffe. Hillary amits that the White House didn’t give a shit about the truth. Their goal was to deflect the public from the truth, and they did so for weeks. It makes all the difference in the world what version of events plays in the public mind. Nothing I’ve seen of Hillary’s testimony discredits the criticism that the White House politicized its response to the attack. She even threw Ambassador Susan Rice under the bus. Hillary’s covering her ass while spinning a bunch of transparency bullshit to evade the real truth of it all: the lives of our personnel were less important than getting this president reelected. And that’s why the left has pooh-poohed this entire debacle since September 11. All of the administration’s foreign and national security policies have been about amassing and retaining power. From appeasing the Muslim world to grandstanding on human rights to creating a kill list to liquidate those who would expose Barack Hussein’s anti-terror hypocrisies, this administration has been a disaster for U.S. interests in the world and for the lives of Americans at home and abroad. That’s what difference it makes. At least folks like the late Andrew Breitbart, and James O’Keefe who continues his work, have been willing to point it out.

More from Robert Stacy McCain, “Liberal Blogger: ‘How Dare You Smear Hillary by Quoting Her Accurately!’” (via Memeorandum).

PHOTOSHOP CREDIT: Geri Hendricks on Twitter.

I noted earlier that “The Hagel nomination is the epic battle ground for the competing visions of U.S. foreign and national security policy for the next four years and beyond. And, well, perhaps some folks at NYT are reading my blog.

See, “Hawks on Iraq Prepare for War Again, Against Hagel“:

In the bitter debate that led up to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said that some of his fellow Republicans, in their zest for war, lacked the perspective of veterans like him, who have “sat in jungles or foxholes and watched their friends get their heads blown off.”

Those Republicans in turn called him an “appeaser” whose cautious geopolitical approach dangerously telegraphed weakness in the post-Sept. 11 world.

The campaign now being waged against Mr. Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense is in some ways a relitigation of that decade-old dispute. It is also a dramatic return to the public stage by the neoconservatives whose worldview remains a powerful undercurrent in the Republican Party and in the national debate about the United States’ relationship with Israel and the Middle East.

To Mr. Hagel’s allies, his presence at the Pentagon would be a very personal repudiation of the interventionist approach to foreign policy championed by the so-called Vulcans in the administration of President George W. Bush, who believed in pre-emptive strikes against potential threats and the promotion of democracy, by military means if necessary.

“This is the neocons’ worst nightmare because you’ve got a combat soldier, successful businessman and senator who actually thinks there may be other ways to resolve some questions other than force,” said Richard L. Armitage, who broke with the more hawkish members of the Bush team during the Iraq war when he was a deputy to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who championed the Iraq invasion and is leading the opposition to Mr. Hagel’s nomination, says the former senator and his supporters are suffering from “neoconservative derangement syndrome.”

Mr. Kristol said he and other like-minded hawks were more concerned about Mr. Hagel’s occasional arguments against sanctions (he voted against some in the Senate), what they deem as his overcautious attitudes about military action against Iran and his tougher approach to Israel than they were about his views on Iraq — aside from his outspoken opposition to the American troop surge there that was ultimately deemed successful.

Mr. Kristol’s latest editorial argues that Mr. Hagel’s statement that he is an unequivocal supporter of Israel is “nonsense,” given his reference in a 2006 interview to a “Jewish lobby” that intimidates lawmakers into blindly supporting Israeli positions.

“I’d much prefer a secretary of defense who was a more mainstream internationalist — not a guy obsessed by how the United States uses its power and would always err on the side of not intervening,” he added. Of Mr. Hagel and his allies, Mr. Kristol said, “They sort of think we should have just gone away.”

In fact, the neoconservatives have done anything but disappear.

Things aren’t going to turn out well in Afghanistan, but this is what the president’s always wanted.

At the Wall Street Journal, “Afghanistan War Goal ‘Now Within Reach,’ President Declares; U.S. to Transition Into Advisory Role“:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama said he would speed up troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, signaling his intention to accelerate the end of America’s longest war.

After White House meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday, Mr. Obama said the U.S. is moving up the schedules for pulling American forces out of Afghan villages and for ending most unilateral combat operations. That is possible, he said, thanks to what he described as recent gains by U.S. troops and progress in training Afghan security forces to take the combat lead.

“The reason we went to war in the first place is now within reach: ensuring that al Qaeda can never again use Afghanistan to launch attacks against our country,” Mr. Obama said.

“Starting this spring, our troops will have a different mission—training, advising, assisting Afghan forces,” he added. “This sets the stage for the further reduction of coalition forces.”

The shift, announced by the president at a White House news conference with Mr. Karzai, could carry benefits for both leaders as they negotiate winding down the unpopular war, now in its 12th year.

Mr. Obama provided few new details except to say that American force reductions should continue at a steady pace, signaling at least some of the 66,000 American troops now in Afghanistan could leave starting this spring and summer, rather than in the fall, the time frame preferred by commanders.

Top Pentagon officials had said that they envisioned the U.S. shifting from a combat to a support mission, focused on training and assisting the Afghans, in mid-2013. The steps announced Friday by the U.S. and Afghan leaders moved up that time frame by several months, to spring.

A faster withdrawal timeline allows Mr. Karzai to argue back home that he has been able to more quickly recoup Afghanistan’s sovereignty, with Afghan forces taking the lead on security and U.S. troops exiting sooner.

In the U.S., Mr. Obama gets to make the case to Americans that he isn’t only winding down the war, but that he is doing so even faster than he had promised.

To military experts, speeding the withdrawal process may not be the best war strategy. Afghan and coalition officials said Afghan troops still depend on international forces for artillery, air support, intelligence collection and casualty evacuation.

“If this acceleration means the Afghans don’t have access to those combat multipliers…that puts their ability to assume lead responsibility at risk,” said Gen. James Dubik, a senior fellow for the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank occasionally critical of the administration’s strategy.

PREVIOUSLY: “How to Waste a Decade in Afghanistan.”

The world is upside down. Connected lawbreakers like David Gregory get off scot-free, while the justice system crushes those who dare step outside the confines of politically acceptable discourse. Things are so bad that even Obama’s ICE hacks can’t get a break. When DREAM activist Erika Andiola’s mother and brother were arrested the young woman’s response was swift. She organized a politically correct mob of Twitter untouchables to denounce the “injustice,” and promptly won a reprieve from a kowtowed White House scared of its own open borders shadow.

And on cue, the New York Times balloons this farce into the family tragedy of the century. See, “After Immigration Arrests, Online Outcry, and Release“:

PHOENIX — Immigration agents arrested the mother and brother of a prominent activist during a raid at her home here late Thursday, unleashing a vigorous response on social media and focusing new attention on one of the most controversial aspects of the Obama administration’s policies on deportation.

The agents knocked on Erika Andiola’s door shortly after 9 p.m., asking for her mother, Maria Arreola.

Ms. Arreola had been stopped by the police in nearby Mesa last year and detained for driving without a license. Her fingerprints were sent to federal immigration officials as part of a controversial program called Secure Communities, which the Obama administration has been trying to expand nationwide.

That routine check revealed that Ms. Arreola had been returned to Mexico in 1998 after she was caught trying to illegally cross the border into Arizona with Erika and two of her siblings in tow. As a result, she was placed on a priority list for deportation.

After being seized on Thursday, she could have been sent back to Mexico in a matter of hours, but Obama administration officials moved quickly to undo the arrests. Officials had been pressured by the robust response from advocates — through phone calls, e-mails and online petitions, but primarily on Twitter, where they mobilized support for Ms. Andiola, a well-known advocate for young illegal immigrants, under the hashtag #WeAreAndiola.

The reaction offered the Obama administration a taste of what it might expect when it gets into the thick of the debate over an immigration overhaul, which Congress is expected to tackle this year. President Obama has already been under harsh criticism for the number of illegal immigrants deported since he took office — roughly 400,000 each year, a record unmatched since the 1950s.

Ms. Andiola, 25, posted a tearful video on YouTube shortly after her mother and brother were handcuffed and driven away. “I need everybody to stop pretending that nothing is wrong,” she said in the video, “stop pretending that we’re all just living normal lives, because we’re not. This could happen to any of us anytime.”

She is the co-founder of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, one of the groups pushing for a reprieve for immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, as she was.