Flynn, David Duke, denial, denial, fake news and Oroville ... oh, and terrorists
So Michael Flynn is out? Can’t say I’m terrible disappointed. I’m uncomfortable with Flynn, especially in a position as high and powerful as the National Security Adviser. In fact, Stephen Green, over at Insty’s place, pretty much expresses my thoughts on the matter:
I think Trump dodged a bullet with this one, even if he did originally fire it at himself. By most accounts, Flynn was a fine general, but was in over his head management-wise as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.Whatever Flynn’s relations with Moscow might have been — and I suspect they were overblown — the President just can’t afford a bad manager as his National Security Advisor. Better that Trump take his lumps quickly and appoint someone better qualified for the job.
Flynn also seemed to approach is duties in a manner that caused friction and dissension inside and outside of Trump’s cabinet. I think, for the most part, this is a good thing. I’ve already seen those out there questioning Trump’s judgement because of Flynn. While that may be something we all question in the near future, I’m not sure Flynn’s failure points to a problem in judgement. After all, many of his other cabinet level appointments have been pretty good, especially SecDef (and I’m warming a bit to the SecState). If “bad judgement” is indicated after one appointment, I seem to remember someone named Van Jones who didn’t last particularly long.
Apparently David Duke is a big fan of Keith Ellison’s. Or at least he appears to be. He’s endorsed Ellison for the chair of the DNC.
“Keith Ellison, Sally Boynton Brown or Jehmu Greene would all be excellent choices — I really like Keith though… I mean, at least he knows,” Mr. Duketweeted.The “at least he knows” remark appears to be a reference to Mr. Ellison’s past with the Nation of Islam and comments about Louis Farrakhan. Charges of bigotry, which the congressman denies, have dogged him since he started running for the coveted DNC job.“If you go back to his positions, his papers, his speeches, the way he has voted, he is clearly an anti-Semite and anti-Israel individual,” Democratic donor Haim Saban said Dec. 2 while at the Brookings Institution’s annual Saban Forum in the nation’s capital, CNN reported. “Words matter and actions matter more. Keith Ellison would be a disaster for the relationship between the Jewish community and the Democratic Party.”
Given Ellison’s past, I can’t imagine that anyone would be surprised by this endorsement. Ellison has been a supporter of Louis Farrakhan’s anti-semitic Nation of Islam for years, decades even. As Duke tries to point out, “Keith … knows”. By the way, Ellison has also been endorsed by Elizabeth Warren.
Perfect.
Failing to name the problem. I’m talking about the aftermath of the Berkeley riots. I’m also talking about the noticeable attempt to shift the blame from the students at the college (and thereby the college or university itself) to “outsiders”. It’s always easier to blame outsiders, especially those who are essentially “unknown”. Because then you can paint them with any type of a stereotypical paintbrush you wish while continuing the fantasy that it isn’t the fault of the institution or the students. Here’s an example of that:
David Mitchell, chief of police at the University of Maryland College Park, called the recent resurgence of black bloc an “infiltration.”“These are folks, in my view, who are not interested in freedom of speech. They’re interested in taking advantage of an opportunity to commit crimes and wreak havoc,” said Mitchell, who has been in law enforcement for over 40 years and has witnessed black bloc tactics on several occasions. “They are here to destroy property and … cause disorder. It’s very unfortunate, and it’s very unlawful.”
Chief Mitchell is sure he knows the 40,000 students there well enough to know none of them would be running around with hoods and masks using violence, intimidation and property destruction as their means of suppressing those with whom they disagree. Right? And isn’t that what they’ve been saying at Berkeley? “Not our students!”
The “anti-fascist” group has come out to refute the claims made by University of California, Berkeley professor Robert Reich and the university’s administration and the police that only “outside agitators” participated in the riot last week at the university, claiming the rioters were indeed students of Berkeley.A site called It’s Going Down, which provides a “platform for revolutionary anarchist, anti-fascist and autonomous anti-capitalist movements“, has published a first-person account about the violence that erupted at UC Berkeley after Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech was cancelled because of safety fears.The author of the article dismisses the statements made by people claiming Berkeley students didn’t participate in the riots or they were hired by Yiannopoulos himself, writing “Of course there were students engaging in militant and combative tactics that night.”
Yes indeed – not “our” problem, it’s those “outsiders”.
So what has the academic left learned from the last election? Well, if this conference of academics is any indication, the word that describes what they’ve learned is … “nothing”.
At this year’s Association of American Colleges and Universities meeting, held in late January in San Francisco, a sense of misgiving filled the conference hall.Panelists raised, implicitly, the question whether higher education has become out of touch with Donald Trump’s America. They fretted over their belief that the current social and political climate is a threat to the liberal arts and, in a time of “fake news,” to the pursuit of truth itself.The Association’s president, Lynn Pasquerella, concluded that it is the average American—giving in to the alleged anti-intellectualism of the day—who is misguided.Higher education leaders, she argued, must therefore work to “destabilize the attitudes at the basis of proposals that devalue education.”
“It’s them, not us! They’re the problem!” So in order to remedy the problem, the zealot Lynn Pasquerella says it is the job of higher education to “destabilize” attitudes it disagrees with.
Oh, and here I thought their job was education, not indoctrination. Silly me.
In reality, this sort of thinking and action could be put under the heading “great ideas to ensure the ‘Trump era’ is extended.”
Speaking of Trump, have you watched how much shoddy reporting and fake news we’ve seen in just 3 weeks? The Washington Times has a pretty good roundup:
The press has a problem, and it seems to be getting worse.A growing number of reporters and their newsrooms have allowed their editorial standards to slip recently, despite President Trump‘s easy relationship with the truth and his tendency to abuse members of media.Rather than adjusting to the unique challenges posed by this new, factually challenged administration, a significant number of journalists have tripped over themselves recently to repeat every bit of gossip and half-cocked rumor involving Trump and his administration.The rush to get these supposed scoops out in the open, whether in print, on television or on social media, has, of course, produced a rash of shoddy reporting.
Indeed it has. The Times says it’s building a data base of the stories as they’re identified. Whoever has that job is going to be one busy person. This too can be put under that heading I mentioned above.
By the way, speaking of reporting, I assume you’ve seen this reported far and wide? No? Can’t imagine why:
In June 2016 the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, then chaired by new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, released a report on individuals convicted in terror cases since 9/11. Using open sources (because the Obama administration refused to provide government records), the report found that 380 out of 580 people convicted in terror cases since 9/11 were foreign-born. The report is no longer available on the Senate website, but a summary published by Fox News is available here.The Center has obtained a copy of the information compiled by the subcommittee. The information compiled includes names of offenders, dates of conviction, terror group affiliation, federal criminal charges, sentence imposed, state of residence, and immigration history.The Center has extracted information on 72 individuals named in the Senate report whose country of origin is one of the seven terror-associated countries included in the vetting executive order: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. The Senate researchers were not able to obtain complete information on each convicted terrorist, so it is possible that more of the convicted terrorists are from these countries.The United States has admitted terrorists from all of the seven dangerous countries:
Imagine that – refugees from war torn countries dominated by violent extremists have actually infiltrated terrorists into the country they identify as their worst enemy. I don’t know, but it seems to me that putting some sort of process together so you can identify these people before they show up here and pausing refugee resettlement from those countries who’ve successfully infiltrated terrorists into this country until you can would have been considered common sense just three weeks ago.
Has anyone kept up with the Oroville Dam situation. It appears that California may get lucky and dodge a disastrous bullet. The problem, however, is that this isn’t a new issue, it’s been a known issue for years and California’s blue government has ignored it. They’d much rather spend their taxpayers money (oh, and the borrowed money) on boondoggle high speed rail projects and refugee issues. Public safety – get out of here!
As I write the Oroville dam in California is eroding back toward a breach of the reservoir. I am a dam contractor. If you ever heard someone say “that dam contractor..” they may have been talking about me.I have repaired hundreds of dams including ones like Oroville, which were in the process of failure. I know a lot about dams.The spillway failure is a common type of failure, where phreatic, or surface water entered the spillway, migrating beneath the slabs. (A static element on a dynamic element, A hard element on a live element). The dam is hydrated and dehydrated as water levels rise and fall, moving, as soils swell from pressures and water mass. In times of high rain the phreatic surface (hydrated soils line) moves toward the surface, venting into the void so produced.This creates a void. Moving water over the years has eroded soils from beneath the slab downstream and left a channel. Now, the spillway has been actuated in a high-flow event and the plates of the spillway have failed into the stream, scouring from beneath them. They will continue to fail as the water continues to flow. The hydraulic jump exacerbates this erosion.If the flow continues for a long enough time, with sufficient velocity, the reservoir will be voided by the migration of the erosion to the pool (cut-back). I cannot tell if failure is imminent, from Ohio, but it is an unacceptable situation that has been allowed to develop. It is a case of pennies pinched producing dollars spent, perhaps tragedy.
And now what does California want from the rest of us? Well to bail them out (literally and figuratively) of course. Send those taxpayer and borrowed dollars to them. Interrupt their rail boondoggle and spend the money themselves!? Heaven forbid. That’s what the rest of us clowns pay taxes for — to make sure those that govern that deep blue state are unaccountable for their action and can continue wasting tax money elsewhere.
Please, please, please California, do us all a favor – secede.
~McQ
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