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Julian Assange Says He Will Provide Evidence Russia Narrative Is False in Exchange for Pardon By Debra Heine

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has offered to provide evidence that the Russian collusion narrative is false in exchange for a pardon from President Trump.

The president, apparently, has not yet gotten the message. On Saturday, President Trump told reporters that he has “never heard” of Assange’s offer to make a deal.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) told The Daily Caller that Trump is being blocked from knowing about the potential deal with Assange. “I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher said.
Report: Wikileaks Turned Down Leaks About Russian Government During Campaign

“The congressman spoke to chief of staff John Kelly two weeks ago about the potential deal with Assange,” The Daily Caller reported. “The Wall Street Journal reported that Kelly told Rohrabacher to bring the information to the intelligence community.”

“This would have to be a cooperative effort between his own staff and the leadership in the intelligence communities to try to prevent the president from making the decision as to whether or not he wants to take the steps necessary to expose this horrendous lie that was shoved down the American people’s throats so incredibly earlier this year,” Rohrabacher said.

Rohrabacher called the collusion narrative “a massive propaganda campaign” and “historic con job” meant to conceal the ideological conspiracy between the intelligence community and the Democrat party.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chaos By David P. Goldman

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

In the Weekly Standard, one Dominic Green writes that “there is no reason why an independent state in Iraqi Kurdistan should destabilize the region.” Mr. Green means well–he supports the Kurds, as do I–but the root of our problem lies in our misguided desire for stability. Of course a Kurdish state will destabilize the region. That’s precisely why we should support Kurdish national aspirations, although we may have to take care to keep the control rods in the fission pile. Our problem is that we have diplomats and generals who don’t want to make waves, and we face opponents who know how to shift the burden of uncertainty onto us.

At a twenty-year horizon neither Turkey nor Iran can be stabilized, for demographic reasons I have detailed in Asia Times. Iraq and Syria, the twin products of Sykes-Picot colonial state-construction, cannot be put back together again. What Vladimir Putin understands well, and we refuse even to consider is that the question isn’t whether chaos, but whose.

I explained why in a March 14, 2006 essay for Asia Times, entitled, “How I learned to stop worrying and love chaos.”

The US is in large measure responsible for the chaos that overstretches the world from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. Trade, information and entrepreneurship have turned the breakdown of traditional society in the Islamic world into a lapsed-time version of the Western experience. The West required the hideous religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Napoleonic Wars of the 18th, the American Civil War, and the two World Wars of the 20th century to make its adjustment. To export a prefabricated democracy to a part of the world whose culture and religion are far less amenable in the first place is an act of narcissistic idiocy.

As a policy, what does the pursuit of chaos entail? In essence, it means going back to the instrumentalities of the Cold War: containment, subversion, proxy wars, military intervention where required, and a clear distinction between enemies and friends. Given the absence of a competing superpower – Russia’s diplomatic embarrassment in the Iranian matter being proof of the matter – it is a far easier policy to pursue.

It does not necessarily mean “realism” in the sense of the Kissinger era of diplomacy of the administration of president George H W Bush, namely preserving the status quo. When the administration of president Ronald Reagan set out to bring down the Soviet Empire, it did not inquire as to the consequences for Russian or Ukrainian; its object was to reduce a threat to the United States.

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Europe: What do Islamic Parties Want? by Judith Bergman

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

Sweden’s Jasin party is not unique. Islamist parties have begun to emerge in many European countries, such as the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and France.

In the Netherlands, Denk ran on a platform against the integration of immigrants into Dutch society (instead advocating “mutual acceptance”, a euphemism for creating parallel Muslim societies); and for establishment of a “racism police” that would register “offenders” and exclude them from holding public office.

“I consider every death of an American, British or Dutch soldier as a victory”. — Dyab Abu Jahjah, leader of a group called Movement X and possibly starting an Islamist party in Belgium. The Belgian political magazine Knack named Jahjah the country’s fourth-most influential person.

The “I.S.L.A.M” party, founded in 2012, is working to implement Islamic law, sharia, in Belgium. The party already has branches in the Brussels districts of Anderlecht, Molenbeek and Liege. The party wants to “translate religion into practice”.

In France, as the journalist Yves Mamou recently reported, the PEJ has already approved 68 candidates and wants to abolish the separation of church and state, make veils mandatory for schoolgirls in public schools, introduce halal food in all schools and fight “Islamophobia”.

Sweden’s brand new first Islamic party, Jasin, is aiming to run for the 2018 parliamentary elections. According to the website of the party, Jasin is a “multicultural, democratic, peaceful party” that is “secular” and aims to “unite everyone from the East… regardless of ethnicity, language, race, skin color or religion”. Jasin apparently knows what the Swedes like to hear.

In an interview, the founder and spokesperson of the party, Mehdi Hosseini, who came from Iran to Sweden 30 years ago, revealed that the leader of the new political party, Sheikh Zoheir Eslami Gheraati, does not actually live in Sweden. He is an Iranian imam, who lives in Teheran, but Jasin wants to bring him to Sweden: “I thought he was such a peaceful person who would be able to manifest the peaceful side of Islam. I think that is needed in Sweden,” said Hosseini.

The purpose of the Jasin party, however, does not appear to be either secular or multicultural. In its application to the Swedish Election Authority, the party writes — with refreshing honesty — that it will “firstly follow exactly what the Koran says, secondly what Shiite imams say”. The Jasin party also states that it is a “non-jihadi and missionary organization, which will spread Islam’s real side, which has been forgotten and has been transformed from a beautiful to a warlike religion…”

In mid-September, the Swedish Election Authority informed Jasin that it failed to deliver the needed signatures, but that it is welcome to try again. Anna Nyqvist, from the Swedish Election Authority, said that a political party with an anti-democratic or Islamic agenda is eligible to run for parliament if the party’s application fulfills all formalities. Nyqvist considers it unproblematic that the leader of the party lives in Iran. “This is the essence of democracy, that all views should be allowed. And it is up to them to choose their party leader”, Nyqvist said.

Sweden’s Jasin Party is not unique. Islamist parties have begun to emerge in many European countries, such as the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and France.

In the Netherlands, two Dutch Turks, former members of the Socialist party, founded a new party, Denk, only six months before the Dutch parliamentary elections. Despite the short timeframe, they managed to get one-third of the Muslim vote and three seats in parliament. The party does not hide its affinity for Turkey: Criticism of Turkey is taboo just as is their refusal to name the Turkish mass-slaughter of the Armenians during the First World War a genocide. The party ran on a platform against the integration of immigrants into Dutch society (instead advocating “mutual acceptance”, a euphemism for creating parallel Muslim societies); and for establishment of a “racism police” that would register “offenders” and exclude them from holding public office.

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The fringe has the momentum as farce and hatred go hand in hand at the Labour conference Marcus Dysch

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

Tuesday morning’s row on the conference floor over how Labour will challenge and punish Jew-hatred was in equal parts shambolic and frightening.

Jews attacking Jews. Israel hated at every turn. Age-old tropes spewed from the podium. How the antisemites must have loved the Labour conference.

What an absolute shower. If ever there was an example of farce combined with despicable antisemitism, this was it.

Tuesday morning’s row on the conference floor over how Labour will challenge and punish Jew-hatred was in equal parts shambolic and frightening.

It is now beyond doubt who is truly running Labour. The mainstream has been blown away and the hard-left is tightening its grip on the party’s soul.

The absence of moderate MPs was noticeable in Brighton. Those who came were largely silent in public. This is a different party now and all discussion of leadership challenges or post-Corbyn reformation is redundant.

All the old boys were back — Ken Livingstone and Ken Loach all over the airwaves offering their unwanted views on Jews and the Holocaust; and amid it all, there was Mr Corbyn, on the dais, watching silently. Oh, Jeremy Corbyn.

The atmosphere around the main conference centre was horrible. I watched a group of delegates scream “f*** off” as Tom Watson, deputy leader, spoke, before bemoaning missing the opportunity to “bodycheck” Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC political editor, as she ran by. Then they asked John McDonnell, Shadow Chancellor, to sign autographs — and all of this within five minutes.

The depth of the party’s problem with antisemitism was all too visible – and this year it came with a new level of frightening warnings.

“Be careful,” one opponent of the proposed rule changes said from the podium, in what seemed to be a thinly-veiled threat followed swiftly by an antisemitic trope about collusion with right-wing media.

There was criticism of the Jewish Labour Movement after it put out leaflets on the eve of the rule change vote urging people to “help Jeremy Corbyn fight antisemitism”.

Mr Corbyn, remember, keeps telling us how much he hates abuse, but could not bring himself to utter just three words in his main speech: “Don’t be antisemitic”.

It was embarrassing to hear Emily Thornberry try to explain that he was not at the Labour Friends of Israel reception because he was preparing his speech, while he was partying his way through at least four other events.

JLM’s efforts in the past 18 months have been worthwhile but bringing up the leader’s name — with all that he implies for Jewish voters — amid days of foul rhetoric looked a misstep.

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What Parades in Pyongyang Ends Up in Tehran By Uzi Rubin

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The latest parade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard displayed a new ballistic missile, the Khorramshahr. Though it had been modified to appear less threatening, the new missile matches a North Korean ballistic missile known by different names in the West, including BM25. The Khorramshahr could eventually enable Tehran to threaten the capitals of Europe with nuclear warheads, and it raises the level of the Iranian missile threat to Israel.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/parades-pyongyang-ends-up-tehran/

Iran’s leaders love military parades and hold them twice a year. The first is in April, when the Iranian Armed Forces – the legacy of the Shah’s imperial military machine – celebrates “Army Day.” During the second annual parade, in September, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) celebrates “Sacred Defense Week,” which commemorates the eight-year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

The IRGC overlaps the official armed forces in almost every respect, deploying its own infantry, armor, air force, and navy. But it possesses one service that is uniquely its own: a strategic missile force. The IRGC is tasked by the regime to develop, manufacture, and deploy Iran’s long-range as well as tactical-range missiles, including the famous liquid propellant Shahab 3 missiles and the somewhat less renowned solid propellant Sejjil 2 missiles.

The IRGC’s annual parade is a combination of carnival, exhibition of future projects, and demonstration of military power. The parade is arranged by order of significance. It ends with columns of mobile long-range ballistic missiles on their launchers, preceded by trucks bearing banners that read “Death To America” and “Death To Israel” in three languages: Persian, Arabic, and English (the English version is somewhat more polite: “Down With” rather than “Death To”). This latter part of the parade gets most of the world’s attention because it flaunts Iran’s new missiles.

At the latest parade, on September 22, the Iranians displayed a brand new ballistic missile, dubbed the “Khorramshar” (after a border city where an epic battle of the Iran-Iraq war took place). It was hauled on the same TEL (transporter erector launcher) that is used for the Shahab 3 and the Sejjil, but the missile itself was evidently thicker and shorter. The Iranians covered its bottom section, presumably to hide its propulsion system and thus obscure its source. But this precaution did not help: Most observers immediately associated the “Khorramshar” with the North Korean HS10 IRBM, first displayed in Pyongyang in 2010. Indeed, in a video the Iranians released shortly after the Tehran parade showing a flight test (the only one to date) of the Khorramshar, it appeared to be leaving a trail of flame similar to that of its North Korean twin.

These two missiles – the North Korean and the Iranian – originated in development programs that North Korea commissioned at the Makeyev missile factory in Russia immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union. At the time, Russia’s defense industry, like the country in general, had reached a nadir, and the new government of President Yeltsin had difficulty supervising the arms factories. The Makeyev factory had been one of the pillars of the Soviet ballistic missile industry; it had developed the original Scud and the first seaborne ballistic missile of the Soviet Union, originally called the R27. This submarine-launched missile carried a single nuclear warhead of an unknown weight with a range of about 2,500 km (in improved models, the range increased to 3,500 km).

When Pyongyang came calling in the early 1990s, the Makeyev factory, like all the other former Soviet arms factories, was out of work and its engineers out of a livelihood. Almost anything could be bought from them. The North Koreans exploited the Russians’ distress and commissioned the Makeyev factory to develop two new missiles: a 1:1.5 scale-up of the Scud missile with a range of over 1,000 km; and a conversion of the sea-launched R27 (which was being phased out by the Russian Navy) into a mobile ground-launched missile.

The first project ended successfully, and the new missile, which in the West was called the Nodong (or Rodong), was displayed in Pyongyang in 2010. The second project was apparently stopped by the Russian government before completion, but the design documentation and the already manufactured components were transferred to North Korea along with a quantity of parts – mostly rocket engines – of R27 missiles that had been collected from Russian junk yards.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

US Ambassador: Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria ‘part of Israel’

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman supports the legal rights of Jewish communities beyond the 1967 boundaries, signaling a fresh approach to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In an expansive interview with Israeli media outletWalla!, the US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, provided insight into the direction the US envisions for Israel as the Jewish state navigates shifting alliances in the region and its approach to resolving the Palestinian conflict. Among the topics Friedman addressed were Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and the future of the two-state solution.

With regard to the first point, Friedman explained, “I think the settlements are part of Israel,” which “was always the expectation when [UN] Resolution 242 was adopted.” Friedman added, “The 1967 borders were viewed by everybody as not secure. There was always supposed to be some expectation of [Israeli] expansion” into Judea and Samaria.

Friedman referred to the “important nationalistic, historical, and religious significance”of these communities, commenting, “I think the settlers view themselves as Israelis, and Israel views the settlers as Israelis.”

When asked about the prospects for moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, Friedman reiterated to Walla! that it was a question of “when not if,” and stressed that “most importantly [the US would] recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the state of Israel and of the Jewish people.”

In discussing the broader geopolitical landscape for Israel in the year 2017, Friedman identified “more interest and flexibility in the Arab world generally,” commenting that “there are natural alliances between Israel and the Gulf, and Egypt and Jordan, that didn’t exist ten years ago and those are going to be an important factor in contributing to opportunities.”

When pressed on the fate of the “two-state solution,” Friedman responded, “Conceivably I think that phrase has largely lost it’s meaning … it’s not a helpful term because it just doesn’t mean the same thing to different people.” Friedman concluded, “The solution comes first, then we deal with the label.”

By: World Israel News Staff

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A swamp creature of the Clinton genus By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation has uncovered a fascinating vignette from the swamp, involving high-level secrets, Clinton friends, and apparent failure to obey the rules. Oh, yeah – and money.

A company whose president is “best friends” with Chelsea Clinton received more than $11 million in contracts over the last decade from a highly secretive Defense Department think tank, but to date, the group lacks official federal approval to handle classified materials, according to sensitive documents TheDCNF was allowed to view.

Jacqueline Newmyer, the president of a company called the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG), has over the last 10 years received numerous Department of Defense (DOD) contracts from a secretive think tank called Office of Net Assessment (ONA).

The important context here is the practice of contracting out highly sensitive policy-related functions to people who may or may not be reliable, because they and or their facilities have not gone through proper screening.

Adam Lovinger, a whistleblower and 12-year ONA veteran, has repeatedly warned ONA’s leadership they faced risks by relying on outside contractors as well as the problem of cronyism, and a growing “revolving door” policy where ONA employees would leave the defense think tank and join private contractors to do the same work.

This is classic example of Beltway Bandits cashing in and building big businesses, cutting themselves in for a piece of the action. The government pays more, the workers get more, the contractor take a percentage off the top, and everybody wins – except taxpayers. This happens on a vast scale, and when national security is involved, the stakes are high.

Still, the nature of the work performed for all those millions has a whiff of cronyism more than security lapses.

One of Lovinger’s main complaints about ONA was that many of the reports contractors imparted very little new information to the think tank. “Over the years ONA’s analytic staff has expressed how they learn very little from many (if not most) of our often very thin and superficial contractor reports,” he wrote in the Sept. 30, 2016 email.

Some of LTSG’s reports bear out Lovinger’s critique. A September 2010 LTSG report, titled “Trends in Elite American Attitudes Toward War,” came to the astounding conclusion that, “American intellectuals have for the last century held considerably more cosmopolitan views than their non-intellectual counterparts.”

Another LTSG report was “On the Nature of Americans as a Warlike People.”

Lovinger also suggested in a March 3, 2017 memo to the record that contractor studies should be peer reviewed. “There has never been an external review of these contractors’ research products,” he said, adding, “It is now clear that over several decades the office transferred millions of dollars to inexperienced and unqualified contractors.”

The contempt for taxpayers is almost palpable here.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

NFL: The National Felons League Crime Spree By Daniel John Sobieski

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

It is hard to say what exactly NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem are protesting, but if it is alleged social injustice and police brutality against African-Americans, these players have to explain their own record of brutality and injustice against their fellow Americans.

We are all familiar with the workplace sign touting the number of days since the last accident. NFL locker rooms should have a sign showing the last player arrest for a criminal act. As of September 25, as Joseph Curl points out at the Daily Wire, it had been a mere 23 days since the last NFL player had been arrested for a crime. The average is about a week between NFL player arrests:

The average time between arrests is just seven days, while the record without an arrest is slightly more than two months, at 65 days, according to NFLarrest.com, which “provides an interactive visualized database of National Football League player Arrests & Charges,” the site says.

Players get arrested for a variety of crimes: drunk driving, drug offenses, domestic violence, assault and battery, gun violations, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, theft, burglary, rape and even murder

The NFL virtually embraces players who abuse women. Take this report in the Chicago Tribune: “In the first round [of the 2017 draft], the Oakland Raiders drafted Gareon Conley, who has been accused of rape. In the second round, the Cincinnati Bengals selected Joe Mixon, who in a much-viewed video punches a woman so hard that she falls down unconscious. In the sixth round, the Cleveland Browns selected Caleb Brantley, who was accused of doing pretty much what Mixon did.”

You might not be able to access NFLarrest.com. Recently the website was down due to heavy traffic, probably from disgruntled fans, many of them veterans, curious about the hypocrisy of the NFL and its players regarding violence and brutality. An early 2017 database of NFL player-criminals is available here.

Perhaps the most notorious NFL player-criminal was Aaron Hernandez of the New England Patriots, who was convicted of murder:

Aaron Hernandez’s murder conviction was formally vacated on Tuesday by a judge in Massachusetts because Mr. Hernandez died before his appeal was heard.

Mr. Hernandez, a former tight end with the New England Patriots, was convicted in 2015 in the killing of Odin L. Lloyd, who was dating the sister of his fiancée. Mr. Hernandez hanged himself in prison last month….

“In our book, he’s guilty, and he’s going to always be guilty,” Mr. Lloyd’s mother, Ursula Ward, told reporters after the ruling.

Another player arrested for a criminal act which killed people was Leonard Little. If you want talk about flaws in the criminal justice system, look at his crimes and the meager punishment:

Little was a star player in college and was drafted as an All-American into the NFL in 1998. The same year the North Carolina native started playing for the big leagues, Little left a birthday party drunk and decided to drive home anyway. In an inebriated state, the St. Louis Rams player drove through a red light, crashed into a vehicle, killing a mother and two children. Little was lucky and didn’t go to prison but instead received four years probation and 1,000 hours of community service. In 2004, Little was arrested again for driving drunk upon failing three roadside sobriety tests. He was sentenced to two years probation.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Iran Deal Isn’t Worth Saving The idea of ‘decertifying’ the agreement but staying in it is too cute by half. Trump should cut cleanly. John Bolton

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

‘Cut, and cut cleanly,” Sen. Paul Laxalt advised Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, urging the Philippine president to resign and flee Manila because of widespread civil unrest. The Nevada Republican, Ronald Reagan’s best friend in Congress, knew what his president wanted, and he made the point with customary Western directness.

President Trump could profitably follow Mr. Laxalt’s advice today regarding Barack Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran. The ayatollahs are using Mr. Obama’s handiwork to legitimize their terrorist state, facilitate (and conceal) their continuing nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile programs, and acquire valuable resources from gullible negotiating partners.

Mr. Trump’s real decision is whether to fulfill his campaign promise to extricate America from this strategic debacle. Last week at the United Nations General Assembly, he lacerated the deal as an “embarrassment,” “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”

Fearing the worst, however, the deal’s acolytes are actively obscuring this central issue, arguing that it is too arduous and too complex to withdraw cleanly. They have seized instead on a statutory requirement that every 90 days the president must certify, among other things, that adhering to the agreement is in America’s national-security interest. They argue the president should stay in the deal but not make the next certification, due in October.

This morganatic strategy is a poorly concealed ploy to block withdrawal, limp through Mr. Trump’s presidency, and resurrect the deal later. Paradoxically, supporters are not now asserting that the deal is beneficial. Instead, they concede its innumerable faults but argue that it can be made tougher, more verifiable and more strictly enforced. Or, if you want more, it can be extended, kicked to Congress, or deferred during the North Korea crisis. Whatever.

As Richard Nixon said during Watergate: “I want you to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up, or anything else if it’ll save it—save the plan.”

Mr. Trump should not be deceived. The issue is not certification. The issue is whether we will protect U.S. interests and shatter the illusion that Mr. Obama’s deal is achieving its stated goals, or instead timidly hope for the best while trading with the enemy, as the Europeans are doing. It is too cute by half to employ pettifoggery to evade this reality. CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Reality Check for NYC Department of Education By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on September 29th, 2017

You know how low the bar is when you read the proud statement that no one has been murdered in a NYC high school sine 1992. You also know how meaningless a 73% high school graduation rate is in a school where more than half of those graduates were chronically absent in their senior year. The middle school that feeds into that high school had a pass rate of 13% on the statewide reading test and 5% in math. Simply put, 87% of the students who couldn’t read at an 8th grade level and 95% who couldn’t do 8th grade math were promoted into high school and subsequently shoved out with diplomas regardless of academic competence This Bronx high school with the lofty title of The Urban Assembly Wildlife Conservation School is headed by a non-profit organization that also runs 20 other schools in New York, all with pretentious claims to professional aspirations in law, justice, global commerce, media studies, environmentalism etc. It’s in the news today because it appears that one of the eponymous wildlife was actually inside the school and stabbed two fellow students, killing one and hospitalizing the other.

On its website, The Urban Assembly lists three pages of prestigious partners from the public, private, not-for-profit and higher education sectors – such impressive names as the Office of the Bronx D.A., JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Brooklyn Law School – even the New York Yankees. Will these partners look more closely at the 20 other schools supervised by this group now that the shocking failure rates on standardized tests give the lie to that inflated high school graduation rate? The murder has spurred demands for metal detectors in these schools but there should be an equal demand for mental detection on the part of overseers and the Chancellor of Education What is the point of a Board of Advisors and support from the community if they are not challenging the lack of achievement in the most basic tools of learning – reading and math? You can’t have a future in any career if you can’t read or count. And who is checking the budgetary expenses of schools with glaring disparities between test results and graduation rates? This is a red flag even for do-gooders suffering from cognitive dissonance and especially for politicos who have been steadily pushing the scandalous crisis in education under a thickly piled rug.