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MAY 20,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET:

MAJOR EDUCATIONAL ADVANCE – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:   A North Carolina school board has voted to stop naming high school valedictorians and salutatorians in an effort to reduce “unhealthy” competition among students.  The Wake County school board unanimously gave initial approval Tuesday to a policy that would prohibit principals from naming the two top-ranking students in a graduating class after 2018, The News & Observer reported.  Why reward achievement?  Where does that get us?  I'd go further and have each student in the graduating class declared a "potential winner."  I'd also abolish grades and tests, and then ask each graduate what airliner he'd like to fly.  Am I not a soldier for equality?  Compliments please.

SMART PEOPLE – HOW DARE THEY THINK FOR THEMSELVES? – FROM BREITART:   A new Washington Post poll finds that fully nine in ten Native Americans do not take offense at the name of the Washington Redskins football team.  The editorial page of the newspaper commissioning the survey forbids the use of the term, claiming “the team name unquestionably offends not only many Native Americans but many other Americans, too.” The Kansas City Star, Seattle Times, and other outlet prohibit use of the name on similar grounds. The new poll suggests that journalists misunderstand Native Americans. I'll bet they do.  I'll also bet that most journalists who announce what Native Americans think have never spoken to one.

OUR MARCH TOWARD FASCISM – FROM THE PORTLAND TRIBUNE:  In a move spearheaded by environmentalists, the Portland Public Schools board unanimously approved a resolution aimed at eliminating doubt of climate change and its causes in schools.  “It is unacceptable that we have textbooks in our schools that spread doubt about the human causes and urgency of the crisis,” said Lincoln High School student Gaby Lemieux in board testimony. “Climate education is not a niche or a specialization, it is the minimum requirement for my generation to be successful in our changing world.”  The resolution passed Tuesday evening calls for the school district to get rid of textbooks or other materials that cast doubt on whether climate change is occurring and that the activity of human beings is responsible. The resolution also directs the superintendent and staff to develop an implementation plan for “curriculum and educational opportunities that address climate change and climate justice in all Portland Public Schools.”  This is absolutely awful.  We're being told by trendy educators and their supporters that the truth is decided, not by facts and observation, but by the votes of school boards. 

May 20,  2016     Permalink

WARREN TO STAR?  IS THIS SERIOUS? – AT 7:23 A.M. ET:  Apparently the Democrats see a starring role for Elizabeth Warren in this year's presidential election.  She will be peacemaker.  Stop laughing now.  From The Hill:

Democratic senators expect Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will soon make moves to mollify restive liberals and unify the Democratic Party behind Hillary Clinton.

Several Democratic senators say they have approached Warren about the role she can play, insisting she is best positioned to mend the schism between the Clinton and Bernie Sanders wings of the party.

Warren has a loyal following among the more liberal Democrats who favor Sanders. She has told colleagues she will play the role of peacemaker, but not until after the last major round of primaries on June 7.

“I think Elizabeth can and will be very helpful,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a Clinton backer who spoke to Warren on Wednesday.

“She is very interested, at least in my conversations with her, in doing everything she can to help get the party to unite for November,” she added.

Warren and her office declined requests to comment.

COMMENT:  I'd love to know what Warren wants from Hillary in return.  I'm thinking, support for Warren for president in 2020, or maybe the vice-presidential slot this year.

I don't believe the factions of the Democratic Party can be united.  The Sanders crowd is filled with old Marxists and professional revolutionaries.  They may agree to an election-year ceasefire, but expect nothing after that.  Sanders is an extreme leftist, and he enjoys that position.

May 20, 2016       Permalink

FINALLY SOME ACTION - AT 7:15 A.M. ET:   The United States is taking some steps to protect our Olympic athletes from the virus infecting South America.  From The Hill: 

USA Swimming will relocate its upcoming Olympic training camp from Puerto Rico to Atlanta over concerns about the Zika virus, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

The team had been planning to train in Puerto Rico for several days in late July before heading on to Rio de Janeiro.

Recently, Major League Baseball moved two games out of Puerto Rico due to the Zika virus, which is known to cause serious birth defects.

COMMENT:  Okay, that's step one, and a good move.  But it does nothing to protect our athletes once they're in Rio.  There is danger from Zika.  There is also danger to long-distance swimmers from serious pollution in the Rio waters.  Rio is simply not ready for the Olympics.  And Brazil right now is politically unstable. 

It's a drastic step, but safety and health come first.  Either cancel the Olympics, or move the events to other venues.  It won't be quite the same show, but moving will demonstrate some adult responsibility, which is often in short supply in the International Olympic Committee, which is mostly concerned about money.

May 20, 2016       Permalink

ANOTHER POLL SHOWS TRUMP LEAD – AT 7:03 A.M. ET:  This comes a day after the Fox poll showed Trump leading Clinton.  From Rasmussen:

Donald Trump has now grown his lead over Hillary Clinton in Rasmussen Reports’ first weekly White House Watch survey.

Trump earns 42% support to Clinton’s 37% when Likely U.S. Voters are asked whom they would vote for if the presidential election were held today. But Rasmussen Reports’ latest national telephone survey finds that 13% prefer some other candidate, while seven percent (7%) are undecided.

At the beginning of this month, Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, posted a statistically insignificant 41% to 39% lead over Clinton who is still expected to win the Democratic presidential nomination. Fifteen percent (15%) favored someone else, and five percent (5%) were undecided.

And...

Trump now gets 76% of the Republican vote, while Clinton has 72% Democratic support. Thirteen percent (13%) of Democrats prefer Trump, while nine percent (9%) of GOP voters favor Clinton. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Trump leads 41% to 28%, but 31% of these voters either like another candidate or are undecided.

COMMENT:  These are very early polls, and obviously can change dramatically.  But I'm quite amazed by the fact that Donald Trump, not exactly the image of the dignified statesman, is leading Hillary Clinton, who has been a national figure for 25 years.  It shows Hillary's weakness.  The Bernie Sanders faction will use these polls, and may use them effectively, to demand quite a bit of influence at the Democratic convention.

May 20,  2016     Permalink

MAY 19,  2016

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:15 P.M. ET:  

SAFER DEAD – Morley Safer, one of the CBS mainstays of "Sixty Minutes," is dead at 84.  Safer will be remembered as a skillful, influential broadcast journalist of uncommon ability with the English language.  Born in Canada, he maintained dual Canadian-American citizenship.  He will also be remembered as one of the broadcast journalists whose reports turned Americans against the Vietnam War.  A full account of the journalism of that war has yet to be done, which has left an open wound in American society, especially among veterans.

GREAT MOMENTS IN EDUCATION – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:   An award-winning Brooklyn English teacher’s decision to provide each of his students with a copy of the Mary Shelley classic “Frankenstein” has thrust him into a real-life horror story.  Todd Friedman, a 29-year public-school veteran who teaches at Midwood High School, was put on administrative duty — and faces possible termination — after the city Department of Education slapped him with disciplinary charges.  His crime: He personally ordered 102 paperback copies of the novel from a publisher last September for his Advanced Placement students.  If only he had just been incompetent, all would have been okay.  Why did he have to commit the crime of dedication to his students?  And why order something by Mary Shelley.  Had he ordered something by Malcolm X he would have gotten a commendation.

CLINTON LEADS IN N.J. – FROM THE HILL:   Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton leads rival Bernie Sanders by 14 points in New Jersey, a poll released Thursday found.  And both Democrats have an edge in the Garden State over presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.  Clinton takes 54 percent support among likely voters in New Jersey's Democratic primary, with Sanders at 40 percent.  In a head-to-head matchup, Clinton leads Trump, 45 percent to 38 percent. Sanders holds a slightly larger lead over Trump, 49 percent to 37 percent.  In the Clinton-Trump match-up, Trump leads among men, 46 percent to 36 percent, but Clinton leads among women, 53 percent to 32 percent.  The New Jersey primary is in less than three weeks.  New Jersey votes the same day California does, on the last major primary day.  After September 7th only the District of Columbia votes.  New Jersey will, if the trend continues, be important to Hillary finally driving a stake into Bernie's campaign.  As for the Hillary-Trump matchup,  Hillary has cause to worry.  A seven-point lead in a heavily Democratic state is nothing to write home about. 

May 19, 2016       Permalink

LEFTIST SCRIBES TURN OFF THE BERN – AT 10:32 A.M. ET:  Common sense may be getting a slight boost on the political left, especially after last weekend's brawl at the Nevada Democratic convention, courtesy of Bernie's zealous supporters.  From The Hill: 

Bernie Sanders is suddenly facing a barrage of criticism from liberal commentators.

As the fallout from last weekend’s Nevada Democratic convention spreads, sharply critical pieces about the White House hopeful and his campaign have appeared in progressive outlets such as Mother Jones, Talking Points Memo and Daily Kos within the past 48 hours.

The Sanders campaign has also taken hits from progressive CNN contributor Sally Kohn, who endorsed the Vermont senator from the stage at a massive rally in New York City just before the Empire State’s April primary.

Kohn wrote an article published Wednesday for Time magazine that was headlined, “I felt the Bern but the Bros are extinguishing the flames.”

The fact that the criticism is coming from left-leaning sources makes it more difficult for Sanders supporters to rebut it.

Meanwhile, Democrats outside Sanders’s orbit argue the jabs show that even influential writers on the left — who tend to take more progressive positions than Democratic leaders in Washington — are concluding that the senator is hurting the party.

“Progressive thought-leaders were early validators for Bernie Sanders’s candidacy, helping him define himself as a credible candidate for president,” said Democratic strategist Evan Stavisky.

“However, as it becomes clear to anyone who can do basic math that Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee ... people who live in the real world see that the time has come for Bernie Sanders to say he did the best he could. Ultimately the math simply isn’t there for it to be viable.”

Some of the flak Sanders has faced has been unusually personal in nature, which is particularly striking given the leftward lean of many of the outlets involved.

“The one thing I do keep wondering about is what happened to Bernie Sanders,” writer Kevin Drum opined in Mother Jones. “Before this campaign, he was a gadfly, he was a critic of the system, and he was a man of strong principles. He still is, but he’s also obviously very, very bitter. I wonder if all this was worth it for him?”

COMMENT:  Bernie shows no signs of turning it off.  He seems to want to be a star at Hillary's convention, and to influence every aspect of it.  Maybe we'll even see Karl Marx's picture on the cover of the Democratic platform.  But he and his supporters are certainly splitting the party.

May 19, 2016       Permalink

REMARKABLE POLL RESULTS – AT 9:21 A.M. ET:  Donald Trump has gone ahead of Hillary Clinton in the latest Fox News poll.  From Fox: 

Donald Trump tops Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, according to a new Fox News Poll that also finds majorities of voters feel both frontrunners lack strong moral values and will say anything to get elected.

Trump has a 45-42 percent edge over Clinton, if the presidential election were held today. That’s within the poll’s margin of sampling error. Last month, Clinton was up by 48-41 percent (April 2016).

Clinton is ahead by 14 points among women (50-36 percent). Yet Trump leads by a larger 22 points among men (55-33 percent).

He also tops Clinton by 37 points (61-24 percent) among whites without a college degree (working-class whites).

Overall, Trump is preferred by 24 points among whites (55-31 percent). He’s even ahead by nine among white women (47-38 percent).

And...

Clinton and Trump have made quite an impression so far. Overall, voters feel the candidates lack honesty, empathy, and strong moral values, and that they’ll say anything to win.

Clinton has a net negative honesty rating of -35 points. That’s because a new low 31 percent say she’s honest, while a record 66 percent say she isn’t.

Trump does better on this measure, although he is still underwater by 17 points: 40 percent think he’s honest and 57 percent say he’s not.

COMMENT:  What a comment on the current state of our political system.  The American people will apparently vote for the candidate they find least offensive.  No one to cheer for.

May 19, 2016       Permalink

TERROR? – AT 9:08 A.M. ET:  An Egyptian airliner en route from Paris to Cairo has gone down in the Mediterranean.  Terror is seriously suspected.  From CNN:

(CNN) EgyptAir Flight 804 vanished from radar on its way from Paris to Cairo with 66 people aboard, the airline said Thursday.

The plane was flying at 37,000 feet when it lost contact overnight above the Mediterranean Sea, the airline tweeted. French President Francois Hollande said he was told the flight crashed, but Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sharif Fathi said he preferred to classify the flight as missing.

"We do not deny there is a possibility of terrorism or deny the possibility of technical fault," Fathi said at a Cairo news conference. "I will continue to use the term missing plane until we find any debris."

For now, finding the airplane and any possible survivors is the priority, authorities said.
Somber relatives gathered in Cairo and Paris airports, seeking word on their loved ones. They were taken to special centers at both airports, where translators and psychiatric support awaited. In Cairo's airport, dozens of relatives paced anxiously in a building set aside for families. Some shouted at photographers taking pictures of them, while others berated officials over the perceived lack of information.

COMMENT:  There is later information.  There are now some reports of debris sightings, but they are unverified.  CNN commentators this morning focused on terror as the likely cause.  There were no distress calls from the cockpit, and the cockpit did not answer repeated calls when radar detected the aircraft acting erratically.

If terror, this would be the third major attack in recent months with a Paris link.  We'll follow the story.

May 19,  2016     Permalink