Feed on Posts or Comments 17 May 2012

Conservatives Richard Falknor on 15 May 2012

Can Virginia Conservatives Bring Eric Cantor to a Better Mind?

“Over the past few weeks, we’ve observed the Republican form of bipartisanship on display, particularly, with regard to Cantor’s deal to extend the Export-Import Bank.  Democrats wanted the extension with a 40% increase in the lending cap, GOP leadership wanted a 13% increase, while conservatives wanted to wind it down.  The grand bipartisan deal was finally forged, and the House voted to increase the lending cap last week by…40% over three years.  Interestingly enough, this ‘bipartisan’ deal was so palatable for Democrats that it passed without a single Democrat nay vote, even as 93 Republicans opposed it. This is not an isolated jog across the aisle.  We are witnessing the same thing with the student loan bill, the postal bailout, the highway bill, appropriations, and the Violence Against Women Act.” –- Daniel Horowitz.
“Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) applauded Cantor’s efforts and successful navigation of bipartisan legislation. . . . ‘I think Eric is much more pragmatic than he’s given credit for, and he’s trying to produce solutions and create records for this Congress that isn’t only opposition to the president but is also a matter of getting things done. When you want to do that, you have to have Democratic cooperation to work,” Cole said. (Underscoring Forum’s.) — Molly K. Hooper

We encourage conservatives to follow closely Daniel Horowitz’ careful tracking of Congressional developments through the Madison Project blog here.

His “GOP Leaders: ‘Let’s Just Get Something Done’” here also led us to Molly Hooper’s post (above) last Sunday in The Hill.

 Analyst Horowitz went on to point out

“Really?  You desire to ‘get something done?’

Folks, it is this desire on the part of Republicans to ‘just get something done’ that has saddled us with $15.7 trillion in debt.

It is the largely insouciant attitude on the part of Republicans that has allowed our society to become entirely reliant on government for healthcare and income during old age.

It is the Republican aspiration for bipartisanship that created the Department of Education, along with billions in subsidies for higher education.  These subsidies helped increase the cost of college tuition by 439% over the past few decades, while lining the pockets of Big Education and incentivizing them to hike the tuition even more, thereby engendering a further need for subsidization.

It is these ‘do something’ Republicans that have gone along with the Democrat anti-free-market agenda energy policy; from green energy subsidies to mandates for ethanol and the use of crony capitalist products.  These policies have helped spike the cost of energy, thereby engendering a further need for subsidization.’”

Keeping Crony Capitalism Alive

The immediate question about Mr. Cantor’s legislative leadership was his support for the reauthorization and expansion of the Export-Import Bank. 

Wrote the Wall Street Journal’s “Review & Outlook”  last March 3  –

“If you thought Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Solyndra would teach Congress a lesson about politicized credit, think again. The federal Export-Import Bank is up for reauthorization, and the only question seems to be how much more taxpayer money Washington wants to put at risk. If the GOP wants to have a principled battle about fiscal waste and market distortions, this is a good one.

The ExIm Bank—founded in 1934 to support trade with the Soviet Union, but never mind—provides taxpayer-backed loan guarantees and other services to U.S. business, especially big exporters. The bank’s renewable charter expired on September 30 and Congress has kept it alive through temporary spending bills.”

. . . . . . . . . .

“The bigger issue is that the bank by its nature helps some companies at the expense of others. ExIm, for instance, helped its biggest client—Boeing—win airplane contracts in 2011 from Air China, Air India, Cathay Pacific and others. That’s great for Boeing, which accounted for 45.6%, or $40.7 billion, of ExIm’s total exposure in fiscal 2011.

But this subsidy means that foreign airlines can then buy newer aircraft more cheaply than their U.S. competitors. This gives them an advantage in the global air transportation market. In a letter to Congress last month, Delta estimated that ExIm cost the U.S. airline industry up to 7,500 jobs and $684 million a year.”

In the event, last Wednesday only 93 House Republicans voted against this crony-capitalist measure, while no Democrats opposed it.  The Republican Study Committee lists here (scroll to p. 7) the many conservative organizations opposing the reauthorization and expansion of the Export-Import Bank.

This afternoon only 19 Republican senators voted against the Ex-Im’s reauthorization.

Eric Cantor and “The Young Guns”

For readers who may have missed the account of the Cantor-affiliated Young Guns Network weighing in on behalf of (now-defeated) Indiana senator Richard Lugar in the Indiana GOP primary, here is an April 28 report from the Weekly Standard’s Michael Warren about that lamentable affair –

“The Young Guns Network, a group affiliated with House Republican majority leader Eric Cantor, is encouraging Democrats in Indiana to vote in the May 8 GOP primary for incumbent senator Dick Lugar. Politico’s Maggie Haberman first reported that the YG Network has been sending mailers to Indiana voters reminding Democrats and independents that they can register to vote in the open primary and encouraging those folks to vote for Lugar and against his conservative challenger, Richard Mourdock. Take a look:”

Last week, RedState chief Erick Erickson declared

“In what may be the funniest story of the day, Eric Cantor is throwing his own super PAC under the bus.

His denial is implausible once the facts are in full view, but given the blow back he has gotten for his super PAC coming out for a host of squishy candidates who’d spend their time in Washington sucking up to Cantor instead of actually fighting for limited government, Cantor must now urge everyone to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

Helping Eric Cantor To Grasp The Conservative Vision

The question for conservatives — particularly in Virginia — is always how to organize effectively to advance their principles.

The Virginia GOP is not a welcoming environment for independent conservatives as opposed to Party cheerleaders, and the Party’s rules and more important its culture do not encourage grass-roots policy-making outside the establishment.

Of course, part of the fault lies with Virginia conservatives themselves. Some obdurately work only what they call “their own issue” — whether guns, families, marriage, taxes, spending, Islamists, Metro malpractice, or school reform — as if Ben Franklin’s warning here only applied to people of some other era –

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Yet Mr. Cantor’s 7th Congressional District here offers a challenge to see whether Virginia conservatives can come together to try to bring the speaker-in-waiting (at least in his reasonable expectation) to a better mind.

The unanswered question: would he then listen to grass-roots Virginia conservatives, or to his legion of K Street campaign donors?

__________________________________________________________________

Readers may wish to refer to our earlier closely related articles Can the Tea Party Movement Now Get the GOP on Course? and Real Perils: Debt Limit, EPA’s GHG Rule, ‘Green’ California.

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Homeland Defense Richard Falknor on 09 May 2012

The Shariah War on Women: The Grandys Reveal Grim Details

Fred Grandy and Mrs. Fred spelled out to BostonTalk1200’s Jeff Katz this morning some shocking details about what they term Shariah’s war on women.

“Female Circumcision”

Mrs. Fred revealed that in the United Kingdom, even though female genital mutilation (“female circumcision”) is against the law (as it is in the U. S.), an estimated 100,000 British women “have fallen victim to cutting.”

In the U. S., she said, this “barbaric procedure” also goes on, but we do not yet have statistics.

But serious pushback is coming!

Tomorrow at 10 AM the Center for Security Policy(CSP) launches its campaign at the National Press Club to “End the Shariah War On Women.”

The think-tank announcement declares – -

“Shariah law oppresses women’s liberties and human rights, denying them their unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness:

Life: Shariah destroys women’s lives through honor killings, physical abuse, female genital mutilation, and rape.  This occurs not only to Muslim women but also to Christian and secular women through acts of kidnapping, imprisonment and murder.

 Liberty: Shariah crushes women’s liberty through censoring free speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association.

Pursuit of Happiness: Shariah punishes women’s pursuit of happiness by denying equal rights and freedom in marriage, divorce, child custody, education and employment.”

The CSP advises that the event will be live-streamed at www.theshariahwaronwomen.org

Fred Grandy, CSP executive vice president, underscored that “the real war [on women] is the Shariah war on women. [This] is one of the best kept secrets in the U. S., if not the world.”

Listen to today’s podcast to get the full force of the Grandy investigation!

First things . . . Richard Falknor on 07 May 2012

We Can’t Pretend There Are No Dangerous Reds Anymore

Even if some Reds seem “soft” and others “hard,” they are all committed to “transforming” our lives in quite unpleasant ways.

Consider three very current reports – -

  • Cliff Kincaid tells (AIM) how “Soviets Funded [an influential] Black ‘Freedom’ Journal”;
  • John Perrazo (FrontPage) spotlights some violent radicals in action in Seattle last week with his “The Masked Face of Marxism.”

Paying Attention

How many of our friends believe, in their heart of hearts, that when governor Mitt Romney is elected president, he and the professionals around him and a new Congress will be able to set the country right largely all by themselves?

Thus Our Team, in their mind, won’t have to go through the tension and anxiety of the Obama Years any longer, or suffer the disdain of many of their social and business peers for speaking out at Tea Parties and capital rallies.

However all of us got into our current peril by years of not paying attention and leaving minding the political and government store to someone else. 

This time the Hard Left has come very close to success.

They are organized for the long haul, not just the November 6 election whether win or lose.

They have used the taxpayer-supported school system to strip emerging generations — that is, many of today’s voters — of any substantial knowledge of our history and government, or any understanding of free-markets and property rights. Just yesterday, for example, Peter Berkowitz asked (WSJ) “Why Colleges Don’t Teach the Federalist Papers.”

Rather we should view our Obama Years of pushing back as training for the industrial-strength civic effort all of us must now put forth over the coming decade to keep our way of life. 

 

Culture wars Richard Falknor on 05 May 2012

Senate Candidate Warren: Can Minority “Roots” Have A Dark Side?

UPDATES! See Hans Bader here (DC SCOTUS Examiner) “Elizabeth Warren ‘Didn’t Tell the Truth,’ Professors Say,” and Harvey Silverglate here (Minding the Campus) “Harvard’s PR Machine and the Cherokees.” Bader reveals:“The safest path for many college hiring committee members is to consider race in hiring somewhat, but not admit it.  Using race appeases liberal civil-rights bureaucrats and law-school accreditors, but not admitting it effectively prevents lawsuits by conservative non-profit law firms like the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), which lack the resources to sue over anything but the most blatant and obvious cases of reverse discrimination.” Silverglate declares: “So it was not surprising to read that Warren’s claimed 1/32nd Cherokee ancestry was something first promoted not by Warren, but by a Harvard Law communications officer trying to construct a particular perception of the school. Indeed, the Harvard Office of Public Affairs and Communication, and the communications offices for many of the various Harvard-branded schools, put out a number of publications that ensure the entire university stays on message or, more precisely, on image.”

* * * * * * * * * *

 

Senate Candidate Warren: Can Minority “Roots” Have A Dark Side?

“An Oklahoma native, Warren said this week she used the law school directory to meet other ‘people who are like I am’ with similar tribal roots — even though the directory does not specify which minority professors belong to.  Chris Child of the New England Historic Genealogical Society said Monday he found documentation indicating Warren’s great-great-great-grandmother is Cherokee, meaning she is 1/32 Native American. Hillary Chabot (Boston Herald) via NRO’s Patrick Brennan

We have this bizarre idea at Blue Ridge Forum that America should be color-blind and gender-blind and ancestry-blind in the transaction of public business including hiring and admission at taxpayer-aided schools.

Shedding more light on Massachusetts U. S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s claim of “minority” status, Mark Steyn writes this weekend (“Going Native” in NRO) about –

“. . .Harvard Law prof and Democrat Teepee Party candidate Elizabeth Warren, who can’t understand why anyone could possibly get the idea she’s been passing herself off as a Cherokee for most of her adult life. Well, maybe they got if from Harvard’s daily newspaper. From 1998:

‘Harvard Law School currently has only one tenured minority woman, Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who is Native American.’

This may be the drollest diversity scam since an Englishman called Archibald parlayed himself into global celebrity as the Ojibwe Indian “Grey Owl.”

Elizabeth Warren’s Cherokee Nation

We wonder whether professor Warren had the Cherokee Nation’s history as slaveholders and suppressors of a slave revolt in mind when “she used the law school directory to meet other ‘people who are like I am’ with similar tribal roots . . . .” 

Did she really do her homework on her claimed (Michael Warren in the Weekly Standard) ancestors?

The “Encyclopaedia of Oklahoma History and Culture” tells us  –

“SLAVE REVOLT OF 1842

Of the Five Civilized Tribes, the Cherokees were the largest holder of Africans as chattel slaves. By 1860 the Cherokees had 4,600 slaves. Many Cherokees depended on them as a bridge to white society. Full-blood Indian slave owners relied on the blacks as English interpreters and translators. Mainly, however, slaves worked on farms as laborers or in homes as maids or servants. The Cherokees feared the aspect of a slave revolt, and that is just what happened in 1842 at Webbers Falls.

On the morning of November 15 more than twenty-five slaves, mostly from the Joseph Vann plantation, revolted. They locked their masters and overseers in their homes and cabins while they slept. The slaves stole guns, horses, mules, ammunition, food and supplies. At daybreak the group, which included men, women, and children, headed toward Mexico, where slavery was illegal. In the Creek Nation the Cherokee slaves were joined by Creek slaves, bringing the group total to more than thirty-five. The fugitives fought off and killed a couple of slave hunters in the Choctaw Nation.

The Cherokee Nation sent the Cherokee Militia, under Capt. John Drew, with eighty-seven men to catch the runaways. This expedition was authorized by the Cherokee National Council in Tahlequah on November 17, 1842. The militia caught up with the slaves seven miles north of the Red River on November 28, 1842. The tired, famished fugitives offered no resistance.

The party returned to Tahlequah on December 8, 1842. Five slaves were executed, and Joseph Vann put the majority of his rebellious slaves to work on his steamboats, which worked the Arkansas, Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers. The Cherokees blamed the incident on free, armed black Seminoles who lived in close proximity to the Cherokee slaves at Fort Gibson. On December 2, 1842, the Cherokee Nation passed a law commanding all free African Americans, except former Cherokee slaves, to leave the nation.”

All of us have to take the bad with the good when we speak of our personal ancestry.  Massachusetts U. S. Senate candidate Warren, of course, cannot be held responsible for the wrong turns the Cherokee Nation took in its history. But we cannot “fix” our complex past by today’s facile schemes of preferences and quotas.

Hers is just another example why preferences in hiring and contracting and university admissions as well as ‘diversity’ quotas show the fecklessness and often the cruelty of such social engineering.

 

Maryland politics Richard Falknor on 29 Apr 2012

Nicolee Ambrose’s GOP Win: A Fresh MD Conservative Voice?

ADD-ON!  Click here for county-by-county chart of MD GOP National Committeewoman Vote.

Ann Corcoran has a useful perspective (Potomac Tea Party Report) this morning on Nicolee Ambrose’s winning the post of Republican National Committeewoman yesterday in an unusually hard-fought contest with GOP Establishment veteran Audrey Scott.

Blogger Corcoran titles her post “Vote signals need for MD GOP to ‘get past Ehrlich.’”

Indeed.

 The Audrey Scott Record

Audrey Scott was “the hammer” for the last Ehrlich campaign.  Whatever the former governor’s many political sins (which we have been cataloguing for some time), she carried his banner with fidelity and some grit.  She also held elective executive office as mayor of Bowie, and, in our view, was an efficient Maryland secretary of planning.  We were sad to see her diminish her legacy in public life with a crude attack on conservative Representative Roscoe Bartlett just before his last primary win.  

But that Bartlett attack illustrates her major shortcoming:  if the Maryland GOP Establishment, in this case likely state senator David Brinkley’s campaign, asked Mrs. Scott to make a questionable if not self-defeating political move, she didn’t demur. We believe she knew better.  In recent times, she owed her GOP colleagues her judgment more than her obedience.

The Ambrose Promise

James Bopp: “But, in my view, the national committee’s job is to create the environment in which Republicans can be elected to set policy. . . . The Republican Party was founded to advance a set of principles — most famously, ending slavery. Electing politicians to public office is a means to that end. [Senator Lamar] Alexander, it seems, would reverse this: Let’s just elect public officials and see what public policies they come up with.”

The Baltimore Sun’s Michael Dresser terms Nicolee Ambrose a “conservative activist.”

Young, vigorous, attractive, Nicolee Ambrose does need to tell us at more length what she intends her role on the Republican National Committee to be.

“Growing the Farm Team” is a fine goal, but isn’t it more the job of the state chairman?

Will she join the conservative ranks in the RNC?  Or will she become another voice for the Beltway GOP?

We need more frank discussion, not silence, about the national struggle in the Republican Party between the “country class” and the “ruling class” — a contest well delineated by Angelo Codevilla here and evidenced in the constant stream of posts from, among many other sources, RedState and The Madison Project.

Click, moreover, on the following headline from the Washington Post of last Sunday illustrating the intensity of this struggle: “Book: GOP freshman class turned into ‘a monster’ for Boehner, other House leaders.”

Within Maryland itself, will Nicolee Ambrose use her own “bully pulpit” and her advertised organizational skills as the new Maryland RNC Committeewoman to get behind the drive to petition gay marriage to referendum, and to support the repeal of the so-called Maryland Dream Act on November’s ballot?  These are not just Maryland but national concerns.

Nor are these academic questions for our new Maryland RNC Committeewoman: some very influential Republicans here support gay marriage; some significant national GOP figures here are crafting their own version of a national Dream Act.

 Conservatives and The Maryland GOP

We ourselves didn’t have a vote at the GOP state convention yesterday – - which also elected the following delegates to the Republican National Convention:  Ellen Sauerbrey, Tony O’Donnell, E. J. Pipkin, David Craig, Diana Waterman, Kelly Schultz, Larry Helminiak, Kathy Szeliga, Michael Smigiel, and Ruth Umbel.

(See Monoblogue’s informative text and fine images of the Friday part of the GOP conference here.)

But if we had had a vote and had attended, we would have cast it for Nicolee Ambrose. 

We hope the Ambrose win yesterday (a county-by-county chart of the vote will be posted later as an add-on) signalled an end to “centrist” and statist GOP politics in Maryland, not just a change in the top GOP lineup.

Beyond the run-up to this November’s elections, Maryland conservatives need to organize seriously and do so for the longer haul to guide the GOP and the state in a better direction.

Otherwise an outcome like the one Joel Kotkin describes in “The Great California Exodus” (Allysia Finley in the WSJ) here may also be the outcome awaiting the Old Line State.

“As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California’s politics become even more left-wing. It’s a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, ‘the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees.’”

Will Montgomery County be the first to reflect this scenario if matters are not put right?


 

 

 

Homeland Defense Richard Falknor on 23 Apr 2012

Muslim Brotherhood: 10-Part Video To Detail Their Threat To U.S.

UPDATES APRIL 26, 25, AND 24! Andy McCarthy writes April 26 (NRO) – “The Pentagon has just piled on with various federal law enforcement agencies in the rush to conduct a review of training materials with an eye toward purging anything the Muslim Brotherhood might find offensive — like the insane notion that jihad might have something to do with Islam, or the crazy idea that, just because the Justice Department proved the Brotherhood has admitted to having a mission (a “Grand Jihad“) to destroy the United States, the Brotherhood might, like, actually be on a mission to destroy the United States. All the more reason to watch GBTV’s “Rumors of War III”. I was glad to be part of it, and I just got back from a quick trip to Dallas to watch the unveiling … and then talk about it on Glenn’s show along with a couple of terrific friends — General Jerry Boykin and Diana West — who also appeared in it. More details here. Well worth your time to watch the documentary … and to give GBTV a shot.”
Listen here to “Know Thy Enemy” with experts Fred Grandy; Lt. Gen. Harry “Ed” Soyster (Ret.), former Director, Defense Intelligence Agency; and former Federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy.
Individual sections of the ten-part video on the Muslim Brotherhood can be viewed here.

* * * * * * * * * *

Muslim Brotherhood: 10-Part Video To Detail Their Threat To U.S.

Tomorrow morning April 24 at the National Press Club (NPC), Frank Gaffney will unveil his video “Course in Ten Parts” on the Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within.

Click here for the video introduction to the 10-part course.

Former Reagan defense appointee Gaffney is now chief of the Center for Security Policy.

The Center asked today in their “Losing the Jihadists’ War on America Frank Gaffney, Top Intelligence Professionals Reveal Who is Responsible — and Why”  –

“Why, despite more than ten years of efforts – involving, among other things, the loss of thousands of lives in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, well-over a trillion dollars spent, countless man-years wasted waiting in airport security lines and endless efforts to ensure that no offense is given to seemingly permanently aggrieved Islamist activists – are we no closer to victory in the so-called ‘war on terror’ than we were on 9/11?

In fact, such a prospect is becoming more remote by the day–and no one seems able to explain the reason why. (Bolding in original.)

The missing answer will be revealed tomorrow at the National Press Club at 9:30 a.m. with the unveiling of a new web-based, ten-part video course called ‘The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within,’ presented by Mr. Gaffney.” (Highlighting Forum’s.)

The Center declared the NPC event will be “live-streamed at www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com.”

Conservatives should find this painstakingly prepared and in-depth video series invaluable for grass-roots gatherings, and for bringing politicians on both the national, and state and local levels to a more alert mind on Islamist threats and ways to cope with them.

Stay tuned for links to the video course.

First things . . . Richard Falknor on 21 Apr 2012

Multicultural Mischief Stalks Schools from Georgia to Maryland

“… [Y]ears of liberals running their own private indoctrination camps through the American education system have finally taken their toll and are churning out reliably liberal kids who will inevitably come of age. Not enough of them are conservatives and not enough of them will be mugged by reality to convert to conservatism.” – Zorro (via Mark Steyn and Stanley Kurtz)

One gritty fighter against this indoctrination-under-the-guise-of-education trend is Mary Grabar who offers “intellectual ammunition for dissidents of the anti-Western, anti-American academic regime” and rightly styles herself “Editor and Organizer of the Resistance.”

More on writer Grabar here.

Yesterday we were catching up on Graber’s latest report from Georgia, which included a brief post from National Association of Scholars’ Ashley Thorne who explained –

“NAS member and contributor Mary Grabar, whose nom de blog is ‘Dissident Prof,’ has posted two videos on her website that give a window into the academic-credit-for-activism culture in contemporary higher education.

The first video is of a teach-in held on February 4. The first 40 seconds of the video shows Jennifer Esposito, a professor at Georgia State University pledging to give extra credit to students in her ‘Race, Class, and Gender in Education’ course if they bring in handwritten letters to legislators opposing certain immigration reform bills (HB 87 in Georgia and HB 59 in Arizona).”

National Association for Multicultural Education—Georgia Chapter

Investigator Grabar then pointed out (scroll down) –

“The Georgia Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education [NAME] is working to prevent students from forming their own opinions before college by sponsoring speakers on the topic of ‘Teaching in a Diverse World’ and by linking to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance site that highlights a teacher fired for providing her students with ‘authentic learning opportunities’ in the form of writing essays about the Trayvon Martin case and then holding a fundraiser, complete with hoodie-clad students.  Dissident Prof wonders if any student essays in support of due process would get good grades from this teacher, though.”

Well, we asked ourselves yesterday, what is the Maryland chapter of this fine group of NAME constitutionalists contributing to improving history and civics learning in the Old Line State?

Here is what we found.

Carroll County Schools Host NAME Meeting Next Saturday

A Carroll County school system flyer here announces

“Maryland Multicultural Coalition Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education

2012 Annual Statewide Multicultural Education Conference

Beyond Multiculturalism: The Road Less Traveled.

. . . . . . . . . .

Hosted by: Carroll County Public School System April 28, 2012

Winters Mill High School, 560 Gorsuch Road, Westminster, Maryland 21157”

We are always delighted that Maryland’s own Michelle Shearer, 2011 national teacher of the year, carries her message of accomplishment to this and many other conferences as keynote speaker.

But one fears to imagine what the conference theme “Beyond Multiculturalism: The Road Less Traveled” has in store for the Republic.

A taste of what to expect at the Westminster, Maryland  April 28 conference? 

EdChange here declares they will be there.  Their website urges –

“Check out the Introduction to the new book, Assault on Kids: How Hyper-Accountability, Corporatization, Deficit Ideologies, and Ruby Payne Are Destroying Our Schools, by Roberta Ahlquist, Paul C. Gorski, and Theresa Montaño (Eds.).

Read Complicating White Privilege: Race, Poverty, and the Nature of the Knapsack, Paul’s short essay on limitations in the popular ‘white privilege’ discourse, recently published by the Web site, Counterpunch.”

Conservative readers will be thrilled to learn the public, political positions here of the Maryland Multicultural Coalition Chapter’s parent organization NAME.

  • A sample — their position paper here on “undocumented immigrants.”
  • Another — their paper here on “NAME Statement of Solidarity with OccupyChicago and the Global Occupy Movement.”

NAME and its Maryland chapter have every right to propagate their views.

They have no right to do so on taxpayer money.

They have no entitlement to the imprimatur of a public school system suggesting that the Maryland NAME chapter is merely a professional association dedicated purely to advancing the art of  teaching as it has been understood throughout the Western tradition.

The parent National Association for Multicultural Education is clearly a left-wing advocacy organization.

Consequently we — and we are sure many readers – will want to know how much Maryland and local taxpayer money supports not just this April 28 political organization’s statewide meeting — but also supports its other Maryland activities throughout the year by providing facilities, or bankrolling any honoraria, travel, and teacher dues.

First things . . . Richard Falknor on 17 Apr 2012

A Zimmerman Florida Show Trial? One Seasoned Litigator’s View

“In sum, it appears to me an innocent man has been railroaded by the press and the race baiters, aided by an unethical, irresponsible special prosecutor and a racialist President and Attorney General.  I haven’t seen a shred of credible evidence to the contrary. Nothing good can come of this.” – Clarice Feldman

Clarice Feldman first came to this author’s attention around 1969 when she in her words

“represented  Joseph A. Yablonski (‘Jock Yablonski’) in his bid for the presidency of the Union in the late 1960′s  and his successor Miners for Democracy, the reform group which took over after he, his wife and daughter were murdered by thugs in the pay of then Union President Tony Boyle.”

Here is a link to that lamentable episode in the history of American labor.

Last Sunday Clarice Feldman weighed in (American Thinker) on the Martin-Zimmerman matter with her ‘A Struggle Ensued’: Lynch Mob Justice In Florida –

“It doesn’t take a great deal of insight to see how the killing of Trayvon Martin, whom the media almost uniformly inaccurately presented as a younger, much smaller child  (sans his tattoos and gold teeth grill) than he was when killed and smaller than George Zimmerman, was the vehicle for another stab at a national race war. Sometime earlier Zimmerman had taken actions to protest that very Police Department’s failure to act when the son of a Sanford police officer had beaten a homeless black man. Others stepped forward to credibly establish he had no racial animus towards blacks whatsoever.

To keep fanning the flames, the media invented a new ethnic/racial category ‘white Hispanic’.  (A Hispanic-Black fight and murder apparently was unacceptable to the story line they wanted.) Despite CNN’s effort to claim to the contrary and the outrageous doctoring of the transcripts of the 911 call transcripts to support such claims, nothing in Zimmerman’s 911 calls preceding the incident indicated he was stalking Martin with an intent to harm him, nor that his suspicions were aroused by anything except Trayvon’s own behavior on that night at the Twin Lakes housing complex, where there had been 18 crimes in the prior year and where Zimmerman served as a volunteer Community Watch captain.”

Readers are encouraged to consider the entire Feldman post.

Homeland Defense Richard Falknor on 11 Apr 2012

The Muslim Brotherhood Does The Obama White House

Andrew McCarthy here and here and Steve Emerson here and here spell out the details of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) visit from Egypt last week which gained that hostile organization $1.5 billion in American taxpayer dollars.

Former Federal prosecutor McCarthy revealed

“In October 2010, on the eve of the Islamic revolution that the media fancies as ‘the Arab Spring,’ the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood called for jihad against the United States.

You might think that this all but unnoticed bombshell would be of some importance to policymakers in Washington. It was not. It is not. This week, the Obama administration quietly released $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the new Egyptian government, now dominated by a Brotherhood-led coalition in parliament — soon to be joined by an Ikhwan (i.e., Brotherhood) luminary as president.

It is not easy to find the announcement. With the legacy media having joined the Obama reelection campaign, we must turn for such news to outlets like the Kuwait News Agency. There, we learn that, having dug our nation into a $16 trillion debt hole, President Obama has nevertheless decided to borrow more money from unfriendly powers like China so he can give it to an outfit that views the United States as an enemy to be destroyed.”

Last Monday Investigative Project on Terrorism chief Steve Emerson explained–

“They represent the new political power in Cairo, and given their performances in public events in Washington last week, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party has the art of doublespeak nailed.

At two events, four FJP members spoke about dialogue and respect for the West, in comments often at odds with the party line in their home country. They sidestepped controversial issues and tailored their message of dialogue to exclude the party’s extreme positions during an appearance Wednesday at Georgetown University and Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

They stuck to that theme despite aggressive questions which came mostly from Egyptian secularists.

‘We are here to start building bridges with the United States,’ said Sondos Asem, the senior editor of the Brotherhood website Ikhwanweb.com and the editor of the group’s Twitter account. She spoke about the FJP’s embrace of ‘Freedom, Human Dignity, Justice, and Democracy,’ as well as her own experiences of being considered a security risk under the Mubarak regime.

But the website she edits, Ikhwanonline.com, has previously burned those bridges with hateful and anti-Western rhetoric. In a statement condemning Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of American special forces, an article published by Ikhwanonline condoned attacks on foreign forces occupying Muslim lands, including American troops. The article states, ‘so long as occupation remains resistance is legitimate and it [the Muslim Brotherhood] calls on the United States, NATO and the EU to end the occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq, and recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.’

Other articles on her website hail violence and terrorism. One celebrates the life and death of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, while another claims that America actually creates terrorist states to have reasons to invade the Muslim world.”

The Grandys Sound The Brotherhood Alarm on Talk1200

Sounding the alarm (audio) this morning about the special exemptions from U.S. border inspection given to the MB delegation, however, were Fred Grandy and Mrs. Fred on Talk1200 .

Mrs. Fred asks –

“Where is the outrage in our country”?

Fred Grandy warns listeners about another group in the panoply of creeping shariah: the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America.

Translating Jihad’s post “Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America Cautions Muslims Against Participating in American Legal System; Urges Them to ‘Hate It in Their Hearts’” points out –

“It is important to note that AMJA–whose stated purpose is to ‘clarify the rulings of the sharia which are relevant for those who live in America’–is not just a fringe organization with no influence. The Islamic scholars involved with this group occupy influential positions in universities, Islamic centers, and mosques throughout the United States.”

Readers may wish to see the lists of these Islamic scholars at their various academic and Islamic locations in the U.S. here, and here (Andrew Bostom).

In an ironic development, Islamist-friendly Grover Norquist will be a guest host on WMAL, the Grandys’ old radio station, tomorrow here (scroll to bottom) on WMAL’s Morning on the Mall show.

Last year Fred Grandy and his wife Catherine Mann, aka Mrs. Fred, left their morning show on WMAL.

She declared in “The muzzling of Mrs. Fred” (Daily Caller) –

“So Mrs. Fred Friday began to change. Now, instead of railing against cyclists on Old Georgetown Road, Fred and I were slowly connecting the dots between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, that body of 57 Islamic states (Palestinian Authority included) that has since 1993 openly claimed in the UN that human rights policy must be subservient to Sharia law.

For our efforts, Fred and I were sometimes called racists and Islamophobes, but our audience loved our shows. Calls and emails would pour in during and after these reports wanting to learn more about the slow but steady progress of civilization jihad. Why wasn’t Nidal Hassan stopped before he murdered fourteen people at Fort Hood? Why is he still not referred to as an Islamic extremist in the official DOD report on the shootings?

The demand for more information eventually culminated two weeks ago in a large public forum on Capitol Hill co-hosted by the radio station, the Heritage Foundation, The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Westminster Institute. Fred fielded a panel of experts on domestic terrorism who packed the house and left the audience wanting more.

Nevertheless, just a few days after the event, Fred was told to tone down the jihadist talk and make sure I did the same. I didn’t. In my February 25th report on how Christians had been arrested in Dearborn, Michigan, for simply talking about their religion to Muslims, I said something that outraged our management and was dismissed.

I’m not sure exactly what I said that they objected to, but if I had to guess, I’d guess it was how I concluded the show: ‘If I don’t return next Friday to continue this discussion, you’ll know that CAIR has successfully put pressure on WMAL — and the radical Muslims have won.’”

Mrs. Fred asked today about the Obama Administration’s pandering to the Muslim Brotherhood: “Where is the outrage?”

Readers might want to ask their conservative friends in the House and Senate: “Where is your outrage?”


 

 

 

2012 Election Richard Falknor on 11 Apr 2012

Mitt Romney’s Presumptive Nomination and The Conservative Base

“. . . Obama is throwing the country off a cliff and when you’re plunging into a bottomless chasm, you can’t get too picky about which branch you grab on the way down.” –-John Hawkins (via The Transom)

Here is a bright side of the conclusion of the GOP presidential nomination race and its media hype: the conservative base and the Tea Partiers can now pay more attention to the composition of the next Congress and, equally important, to the need to improve its Republican leadership.

Conservatives and Tea Partiers need to develop ways to hold members of the Congress who sail under the conservative flag to account – not just on legislation, but also on oversight, and on failure to act when national concerns are threatened.

Almost all the media reported the GOP nomination contest as a kind of national horse race pivoting on personality and money.  We suspect that this kind of political theater was particularly congenial to the Beltway GOP.

Conservatives – with their grasp of our history and constitution –understand that the November 6, 2012 presidential election is about confronting the grave danger president Barack Obama represents.

Mr. Obama is not just a misguided fellow in ‘over his head’,  but a serious and to-date-effective revolutionary politician.

And this danger comes not just from the president himself, but from the strong, sophisticated movement he represents:  a movement now embedded in our government and in the media, the professions, and in our schools from K through Ph.D.

This movement long ago began its work of ‘transforming America.’ It now continues its long march using the powers and the “bully pulpit” of the presidency, and the skill of the  “permanent government” of the senior civil service.

We don’t know who will win on November 6 partly because that will depend on a number of contingencies.

Consider the bailout of September 2008 –  which arguably took much of the wind out of Senator John McCain’s presidential effort.

Last Friday, Scott Rasmussen wrote

“The bailouts remain the most hated pieces of legislation in recent American history. They spurred both the tea party and the Occupy movements and convinced millions that a corrupt relationship exists between big government and big business. But both Romney and Obama are supporters of the bailouts. Given the public mood, it is almost beyond comprehension that neither party could come up with a presidential candidate opposed to the bailouts. Looking ahead, most voters hear a lot of rhetoric about deficit reduction but don’t believe either party has proposed a serious plan to stop ever-increasing government spending. Most don’t even believe that the budget cuts agreed to during the debt ceiling debacle will ever be implemented.”

(Whether or not the public is wholly or partly right about the bailouts, the public is certainly on target when they believe there is a far too intimate connection between the interests of favored businesses and powerful Federal politicians.)

Our point is that unexpected events (or manufactured crises) between now and November 6 demanding quick, clear positions from the president and his challenger can decisively shape November’s election outcome in these very dangerous times.

If president Obama edges out reelection, we shall need a strong principled GOP leadership in both houses of the Congress to limit further damage.

If governor Mitt Romney is elected, we shall also need such a strong principled leadership to ensure we begin to roll back the Left’s already-begun “transformation of America.”

As we and many others have written and detailed, the record of the Senate GOP leadership from 2009 onward has been lamentable.  The record of the House GOP leadership in the current Congress has been, charitably put, ineffective and likely will continue on that path.

It won’t do just to finally have 51 GOP senators or to keep the House GOP majority.

If conservatives want conservative outcomes from the next Congress, they will have to do better in finding ways to hold GOP members accountable.

We all saw the many disappointments from the House of Representatives GOP after the November 2, 2010 election gave the Republicans an historic victory in that chamber.

Consequently conservatives should understand they won’t get what they are looking without improving the current GOP Congressional leadership here and here.

And we’ll be looking at some of these essential conservative goals shortly.

Our Political Class Is Incapable of Changing Course — The Responsibility for Right Action is Ours

But keep in mind, we are aiming to elect a replacement for president Obama.  We are not electing a “Republican Caesar” with plenary powers to set America right. The hard, careful, and detailed work of setting America right must continue from the grass roots informed by the many independent conservative analysts. And it must be accelerated now.

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