Displaying the most recent of 89967 posts written by

Ruth King

Academia’s Racism-Industrial-Complex A college education now is all about “dismantling whiteness.” January 15, 2018 Jack Kerwick

Some recent examples from the world of Higher Education make the point that I’ve been at pains to impress upon readers, namely that for as sprawling as is the Academic-Industrial-Complex (AIC), it is essentially a function of an even more expansive Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC).

[1] There’s Brooklyn College’s Laurie Rubel, professor of math education. According to the student journalists who run the college watchdog publication Campus Reform, Rubel wrote an article for the Journal of Urban Mathematics Education in which she contends that the concepts of “meritocracy” and “color-blindness” are both “tool(s) of whiteness.”

The problem with meritocracy, Rubel asserts, is that it “ignores systemic barriers and institutional structures that prevent opportunity and success.”

As for color-blindness, Rubel remarks: “Teachers who claim color-blindness—that is, they claim not to notice the race of their students—are, in effect, refusing to acknowledge the impact of enduring racial stratification on students and their families.”

Rubel continues: “By claiming not to notice, the teacher is saying that she is dismissing one of the most salient features of the child’s identity and that she does not account for it in her curricular planning and instruction.”

So, by aspiring to know and evaluate their students independently of their racial backgrounds, teachers promote “whiteness.”

However, Rubel also contends that if teachers notice the racial backgrounds of their students, they’re guilty of promoting “whiteness.” For example, when teachers say of their students that they “can’t relate” to them, they note differences. But, Rubel laments, these “differences are typically cast in terms of deficit constructions about students, their places, and their families.”

In order to walk this tightrope, Rubel proposes that teachers include “social justice” issues into their math lessons.

DACA Probably Dead, Trump Says DREAMers not getting relief because of Democrat obstinacy. Matthew Vadum

President Obama’s program that shields the so-called DREAMers from deportation is “probably dead” President Trump declared yesterday after a drama-filled week of high-stakes negotiations on immigration reform.

Congressional Democrats have been trying to blackmail the president, offering to swap border security funding for protecting approximately 700,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) claimants. Although Democrats are continuing to threaten to force a government shutdown in days unless an agreement protecting those benefitting from the constitutionally dubious DACA program is reached, “Democrats don’t really want” to resolve the issue, Trump tweeted Sunday morning.

Minutes later he added, “I, as President, want people coming into our Country who are going to help us become strong and great again, people coming in through a system based on MERIT. No more Lotteries! #AMERICA FIRST.”

DREAMers, by the way, are the stuff of leftist myth. The misleading sobriquet comes from the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act, a legislative proposal to grant underage illegals immigration amnesty. The conceit was invented to promote the illegal immigration Democrats need to win elections. They’re not the rock stars or rocket scientists people like DNC chief Tom Perez claim. Despite being sacred cows for progressives, DREAMers tend to be less educated and less established than typical Americans. Many can barely speak English and have little in the way of future prospects.

The Humanitarian Hoax of Common Core: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 19 by Linda Goudsmit

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years presenting his crippling Common Core advocacy as altruistic when in fact it was designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democrat Party with its “Resistance” movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy the capitalist infrastructure of American democracy and replace it with socialism.

Common Core is a deliberate information war targeting American children. It is a deceitful campaign to undermine established American Judeo-Christian cultural norms celebrating patriotism, the meritocracy, and American sovereignty. The Leftist/Islamist axis is promoting collectivism in preparation for one-world government. This is how it works.

Serious educational reform enacted by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 was designed to provide high standards and measurable goals to improve individual outcomes in education. Federal funding was correlated to test performance. Rather than improving education the net effect of NCLB was education reformatted to teach to the tests. Education critic Alfie Kohn argued that the “NCLB law is ‘unredeemable’ and should be scrapped – its main effect has been to sentence poor children to an endless regimen of test-preparation drills.” There were loud calls for reform.

Enter Common Core State Standards (CCSS) launched under Obama in 2009 deceptively marketed by a propaganda campaign emphasizing the positive benefits of national standards and uniformity in curriculum guidelines with measurable effectiveness for American public education K-12. Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are mistakenly understood to be a derivative of the No Child Left Behind Act – they aren’t.

Obama’s 2009 Race To The Top program was introduced as a competitive grant program that awarded points to states for satisfying performance-based evaluations of teachers and principals based on measures of educator effectiveness. Sound familiar? It should because measurable effectiveness = student test scores. Even though Race to the Top did not mandate adoption of Common Core, to receive federal stimulus money states had to “commit” to adopting Common Core standards. Forty-two states now operate public and private education under the Common Core program.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: Will Indiana Choose a Genuine Conservative Congressman? By Eileen F. Toplansky see note please

THE INDIANA GOP PRIMARY IS ON MAY 28, 2018 RSK
It is clear that much still needs to be done to maintain the many encouraging strides President Trump has already made in his first year. And with so many long-term Republicans retiring, it is critical to look for impeccable conservative credentials in those running in 2018.

Richard Moss, M.D. is running in Indiana’s 8th Congressional District against an entrenched Republican. Dr. Moss is “formally committed to joining the ‘Freedom Caucus,’ the conservative bloc within the Republican Caucus in Congress[,] at the announcement of his candidacy on September 9, 2017.” Dr. Moss went to Indiana University in Bloomington and I.U. School of Medicine. His mother was actually from Indiana but left in 1931 to live in the Bronx in New York with her family.

Founded in 1991, Dr. Moss’s medical office provides care and treatment in the specialty of otolaryngology, or routine and complex ear, nose, and throat disorders; head and neck cancer; and facial plastic and cosmetic surgery.

Dr. Moss agreed to give his views on the following questions posed to him by American Thinker.

Why do you think “squish” Republicans are so hesitant in maintaining a winning streak?

They don’t really want to win. They prefer minority status or a Democratic president so they can pound their chests resisting him, claiming conservative principles, which is good for fundraising. But when they actually have power … they shrink from doing so. They are basically big-government Republicans and political cowards.

What are your views on immigration control?

No DACA. No amnesty. No birthright citizenship. No chain migration. Build a wall. I would have a moratorium on immigration other than for Nobel Prize-level talent and proven Solzhenitsyn-level dissidents and reformers.

Trump-Russia: Not Mueller’s First Botched Investigation By Daniel Ashman

Controversy surrounds Robert Mueller and his investigation into the Trump-Russia collusion mirage. Some maintain that he is the ultimate professional dedicated to following the truth, but others say he is a political hack.

There is no need to wonder about how Mueller operates. His history has made it quite clear. One needs only to study his actions as FBI director when he managed the FBI’s most important investigation ever.

In September of 2001, an entity began mailing anthrax through the U.S. postal system, hitting such prominent targets as NBC and Senator Tom Daschle’s office. The terrorist attacks killed five and left others hospitalized. The world panicked.

Under Mueller’s management, the FBI launched an investigation lasting ten years. The bureau now brags about spending “hundreds of thousands of investigator hours on this case.” To fully appreciate the Mueller response – whom his people investigated, targeted, and found guilty – it is appropriate to first build context.

The anthrax letters began just a week after the 9/11 attack. Simultaneous to planning the airplane hijackings, al-Qaeda had also been weaponizing anthrax. One of their scientists who ran an anthrax lab in Afghanistan also housed 9/11 hijackers. In fact, one of the hijackers, Ahmed al Haznawi, went to the emergency room in an American hospital with a skin lesion, which a team of bioterrorism experts from Johns Hopkins confirmed was probably due to anthrax. Meanwhile, the 9/11 hijackers were also trying to obtain crop-dusting airplanes.

So how did Mueller’s investigative team handle the case?

Mueller issued a statement in October of 2001, while anthrax victims were still dying: the FBI had found “no direct link to organized terrorism.” The Johns Hopkins team of experts was mistaken, the FBI continued; Haznawi never had an anthrax infection. The crop-dusting airplanes they needed were possibly for a separate and unrelated anthrax attack.

A few weeks later, the FBI released a remarkable profile of the attacker. FBI experts eschewed analysis of the content of the letters, where it was written in bold block letters, “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is Great.” Instead, they focused on a “linguistic analysis,” stating that the letter’s author was not “comfortable or practiced in writing in lower[]case lettering.” They therefore concluded that the author was likely an American.

The investigators hypothesized that the attacker was a lonely American who had wanted to kill people with anthrax for some undefined time period but then became “mission-oriented” following 9/11 and immediately prepared and mailed the deadly spores while pretending to be Muslim.

Earmarks Are Inherently Corrupt. Congress Has No Business Resurrecting Pork Barrel Politics By Tom Coburn

Tom Coburn, M.D., was the Republican Senator from Oklahoma from 2005-2015 after being in the House from 1995 to 2001. He is the honorary chairman of Open the Books- https://www.openthebooks.com/

Months of headlines detailing misconduct inside Congress have apparently not been enough to shame Washington away from soliciting even more scandals.

Congressmen resigning in disgrace for unethical and potentially criminal activity. A secretive congressional account doling out millions of dollars, with little transparency or accountability as to who is getting the money or for what purpose.

While this sounds a lot like the recently exposed congressional hush fund used to cover-up harassment claims, it is actually a description of life in Congress in the not so distant past during the era of earmarking.

An earmark, more commonly derided as pork, is a provision inserted into a bill or accompanying report at the request of a member of Congress that directs funds to be taken from the Treasury and given to a specific recipient, circumventing the standard merit-based and competitive procedures typically used to award federal assistance. Earmarks can, and did, financially benefit politicians, their family members, and campaign donors.

As a member of both the House of Representatives and Senate, I have witnessed earmarking up close and know it is inherently corrupt. Earmarks were abused as a form of currency to buy and sell the votes of politicians and to reward political supporters. Convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff affectionately called the earmark system “the favor factory.” Amidst criminal investigations and embarrassing headlines, public outrage forced Congress to shut down the favor factory in 2010.

Taxpayers are not nostalgic for a return to the days of bridges to nowhere and pork barrel politics. In fact, most are angry that Congress has done little to cut wasteful spending or address our growing national debt, which now tops $20 trillion.

But instead of tackling these, the House of Representatives is holding hearings about returning to the days when politicians could freely spend money we did not have on things we did not need that benefitted the well-connected few.

Politicians are rationalizing earmarking as a constitutional prerogative of Congress and arguing that pork makes it easier to pass bills, while offering assurances this time will be different because the make-up of Congress is different and the process will be more transparent.
“If there is one thing I learned during my time in Congress, it is never to underestimate the dumb things politicians will dream up to spend other people’s money on.”

TRUDEAU’S GOVERNMENT ENABLING FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION? VIDEOS

http://jamieglazov.com/2018/01/14/trudeaus-government-enabling-female-genital-mutilation/

On this new special edition of The Glazov Gang, we are featuringTrudeau’s Government Enabling Female Genital Mutilation? — a video which presents Canada’s Michelle Rempel exposing the Liberal government’s heart of darkness.And make sure to watch Anni Cyrus‘ recent stirring speech in Toronto, Canada, where she unveiled The Dire Danger of Canada’s M-103 and cast a terrifying light on how treacherous forces are willfully bringing Sharia and Jihad to your neighborhood.

WHO DIED? JOAN SWIRSKY ****

I started watching Miss America and Miss Universe competitions when I was a little girl, mostly because I loved the gowns. To this day, I still tune in, especially toward the end, when all the gowns are on display. A couple of years ago, I saw my all-time favorite! As the expression goes: TDF––to die for!

I also love the Country Music Awards shows because it’s the only time I hear genuinely thrilling voices without the caterwauling and preposterous over-production that camouflages the dearth of talent in the pop-music industry.

But with rare exceptions, I never tune in to the orgies of self-congratulation, self-importance, and self-indulgence known as the Golden Globes, the Emmys, and the Academy Awards, not only because the presenters and winners are so insufferably narcissistic and vapid but because movies and TV shows have devolved to such a point—with notable exceptions, of course—that this past summer, according to The Los Angeles Times, Hollywood suffered its worst-attended summer movie season in 25 years!

Apparently, this is because the moguls who now run Hollywood and TV and the print media are so out of touch with mainstream America—unlike their bête noire, President Trump, who has his finger on the very pulse of America’s wants, needs, and desires—and so obsessed with leftwing politics, and so hysterical that all their efforts to undermine and sabotage and defeat and impeach him have utterly failed, that they’ve done what millions of losers have done in the past, i.e., doubled down on their efforts.

Who are these desperate people? They are not just the moguls, but all the lefties, including the pussy hat women who have now given up that symbol because it’s too pink and not sensitive enough to perhaps darker colors of the female sex organ and not transgender enough to be “fair” to all women. Can’t make this up!

CHOOSING COLORS

When our Founding Fathers chose the colors of the American flag over 240 years ago, they chose white to signify purity and innocence, red to signify hardiness and valor and the blood they spilled in the cause of freedom, and blue to signify vigilance, perseverance and justice.

On Israel’s flag, the blue lines symbolize the stripes on a traditional Jewish prayer shawl and the Star of David is the widely acknowledged symbol of the Jewish people and of Judaism.

E.R. Drabik The Coalition’s Immigration Challenge

Hand-over-fist immigration levels are straining hospitals, roads, public transport, affordable housing, jobs and the nation’s cultural cohesion. If the Prime Minister has any political nous — a dubious proposition, admittedly — he’ll address this issue before his backbenchers do it for him.

Is the long-standing bipartisan consensus in favour of high immigration set to unravel? While led, for now at least, by a ‘Big Australia’ enthusiast, a recent survey suggests that the Liberals might soon have little choice but to abandon their support for mass immigration if they are to avoid electoral wipe-out.

The issue is becoming too pressing to ignore. Australia’s population swelled by a staggering 384,000 in the year to March, 2017, with around 60% of this growth due to immigration. Propelled by the highest per capita immigration intake in the Western world — a migrant arrives on Australian soil every 2 minutes and 21 seconds — the population will surge past 25 million this year. Malcolm Turnbull is routinely lambasted as a do-nothing Prime Minister who has thus far failed to leave a lasting mark, but that is not entirely true: his supercharged immigrant intake is irrevocably transforming Australia in myriad of ways.

Despite a concerted effort by the major parties and the large parts of the media to smother public debate on the topic, Australians are noticing their urban and cultural environments changing rapidly around them. There appears to be a growing worry about the effects of high immigration, as suggested by an Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI) survey of voters last August. The findings: around three-quarters of voters think Australia does not need more people, with significant majorities seeing such hand-over-fist population growth placing ‘a lot of pressure’ on hospitals, roads, public transport, affordable housing and jobs.

As prominent economist Judith Sloan recently observed, the immigration-fuelled population explosion is squeezing the life out of our major cities, with liveability crashing as the new infrastructure projects necessary to accommodate such rapid growth fall further behind. Another economic commentator, Leith van Onselen, has repeatedly warned that our cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne, face an “infrastructastophe” due to population crush-loading. Australia, van Onselen has pointed out — not least to Andrew Bolt in the clip below — will need to build the equivalent of a new Melbourne every decade ad infinitum under current immigration levels, a scenario that is “unmanageable, unsustainable and undesirable.” Existing residents are quite rightly asking how Canberra’s plan to add millions more people to our already clogged major cities will do anything other than degrade their quality of life.

Turkey, the Arab World Is Just Not That into You by Burak Bekdil

Sunni Arabs do not wish to revisit their Ottoman colonial past. Still, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists.

A poll by Zogby found that 67% of Egyptians, 65% of Saudis, 59% of UAE citizens, and 70% of Iraqis had an unfavorable opinion of Turkey.

For the Sunni Saudis, the Turks were allies only if they could be of use in fighting Shiite Iran or its proxies, such as the Iraqi government or the Syrian regime. Meanwhile, as Turkey, together with Qatar, kept on championing and giving logistical support to Hamas, an Iranian satellite, Saudi Arabia and Egypt distanced themselves from the Palestinian cause and consequently from Turkey.

He runs around in a fake fire extinguisher’s outfit, holding a silly hose in his hands and knocking on neighbors’ doors to put out the fire in their homes. “Go away,” his neighbors keep telling him. “There is no fire here!” I am the person to put out that fire, he insists, as doors keep shutting on his face. That was more or less how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman, pro-ummah (Islamic community), “Big Brother” game has looked in the Middle East.

After years of trial and failure Erdogan does not understand that his services are not wanted in the Muslim neighborhood: The Iranians are too Shiite to trust his Sunni Islamism; the (mostly Sunni) Kurds’ decades-long dispute with the Turks is more ethnic than religious; and Sunni Arabs do not wish to revisit their Ottoman colonial past. Still, Erdogan insists.

Turkish textbooks have taught children how treacherous Arab tribes stabbed their Ottoman ancestors in the back during the First World War, and even how Arabs collaborated with non-Muslim Western powers against Muslim Ottoman Turks. A pro-Western, secular rule in the modern Turkish state in the 20th century coupled with various flavors of Islamism in the Arab world added to an already ingrained anti-Arabism in the Turkish psyche.

Erdogan’s indoctrination, on the other hand, had to break that anti-Arabism if he wanted to revive the Ottoman Turkish rule over a future united ummah. The Turks had to rediscover their “Arab brothers” if Erdogan’s pan-Islamism had to advance into the former Ottoman realms in the Middle East.

It was not a coincidence that the number of imam [religious] school students, under Erdogan’s rule, has risen sharply to 1.3 million from a mere 60,000 when he first came to power in 2002, an increase of more than twenty-fold. Erdogan is happy. “We are grateful to God for that,” he said late in 2017.

Meanwhile, the Turkish Education Ministry added Arabic courses to its curriculum and the state broadcaster, TRT, launched an Arabic television channel.