We have previously discussed the removal university names, mascots, and symbols in recent years in response to student protests, including an effort to replace the GW “Colonial” mascot. I have previously expressed my concerns over the removal of long-held mascots and names in colleges from “the Cowboys” to “Shooter the Fox” to the Aztecs to the “Fighting Sioux” to “Chief Illini” to the “Prospectors” to the “Pioneers.” Now, students have succeeded in convincing the University of California Santa Cruz to remove the traditional California “mission bell” from campus. The bells are part of the the path of the historic El Camino Real, the 700-mile trail that connected the 21 California Spanish missions with hundreds of such bells. Critics insisted the “Deeply painful symbols that celebrate the destruction, domination and erasure of our people.’
In its announcement, the university declared that the bells are “viewed by many populations as a symbol of racism and dehumanization of their ancestors.” However, they are also a symbol for many of the expansion of Christianity and missions throughout North America. There is no question that this was a period of terrible crimes and abuses for Native Americans. There was abuse and cultural destruction. That is history that should be taught and recognized. However, these missions also sought to bring schools, hospitals, and, yes, the Christian faith to the Southwest. To often, it is simply easier for administrators and faculty to simply remove historical monuments or symbols. Not only does it quiet any protests, but it avoids the danger of being targeted as insensitive or even racist. It is far more difficult to add to such displays to create a more accurate or inclusive understanding of history. It is the difference between education and expungement.
The question is a familiar one when symbols and figures hold different meanings for different groups. Valentin Lopez, Amah Mutsun Tribal Band chairman called the bells “deeply painful symbols that celebrate the destruction, domination and erasure of our people. They are constant reminders of the disrespect our tribe faces to this day.” I entirely understand that view and agree that these missions caused untold harm to many Native Americans in forcing the adoption of a foreign language, culture, and faith. However, the missions also have an altruistic meaning and purpose like Mission San Rafael Arcángel which created a medical asistencia as part of Mission San Francisco de Asís. It was the first sanitarium in the region. Both meanings can be represented together in such public displays.
As I have argued previously, I am reluctant to see the removal of such historical images as opposed to placing them into a fuller context. This would seem an ideal case where adding information is better than removing it.
What do you think?
The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward. Winston Churchill
We know each and every word in the DoI was carefully chosen and one word should have been a warning to all of us: whenever. As in, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,…
The framers looked back so they could look forward. And now we have a growing call to erase reminders of history. We are marching right through the life span of a republic to the final stages:
From apathy to dependence – Increasing numbers of people lack the virtues and zeal necessary to work and contribute. The suffering and the sacrifices that built the culture are now a distant memory. As discipline and work increasingly seem “too hard,” dependence grows. The collective culture now tips in the direction of dependence. Suffering of any sort seems intolerable. But virtue is not seen as the solution. Having lived on the sacrifices of others for years, the civilization now insists that “others” must solve their woes. This ushers in growing demands for governmental, collective solutions. This in turns deepens dependence, as solutions move from personal virtue and local, family-based sacrifices to centralized ones.
From dependence back to bondage – As dependence increases, so does centralized power. Dependent people tend to become increasingly dysfunctional and desperate. Seeking a savior, they look to strong central leadership. But centralized power corrupts, and tends to usher in increasing intrusion by centralized power. Injustice and intrusion multiplies. But those in bondage know of no other solutions. Family and personal virtue (essential ingredients for any civilization) are now effectively replaced by an increasingly dark and despotic centralized control, hungry for more and more power. In this way, the civilization is gradually ended, because people in bondage no longer have the virtues necessary to fight.
Another possibility is that a more powerful nation or group is able to enter, by invasion or replacement, and destroy the final vestiges of a decadent civilization and replace it with their own culture.
http://blog.adw.org/2016/10/eight-stages-rise-fall-civilizations/
Olly, consider a few counter ideas to your premise, which like many right wing beliefs blames our problems on the poorest among us. Given they have the least power, this is not the 1st place I’d look.
During the recent Great recession, any advertised job offers resulted in long lines of willing workers. While Americans work longer hours and with less vacation than virtually any in other developed countries, our productivity is among the highest.
Add in the fact that it now takes two workers to maintain most households, unlike the days of the “greatest generation” when Pop might have a union job, Mom stayed at home, and they lived in a small tract house, not a mobile home down by the river. The kids could play in the neighborhood until dusk and no daycare businesses got part of the family income.
If today’s workers are looking to be dependent, unless they hit rock bottom – and they might – they won’t get anything until they reach 62. If that – and later Medicare – is dependency, in most cases it was earned and helps parents stay independent and healthy and their kids freer to pursue those two careers until a much older age.
Dependency on a job that will last your lifetime is also gone and if it doesn’t get shipped to Mexico it probably will to South Carolina where like much of the deep south wages are low since Reconstruction and government provides minimal services.
Olly, I think we live in the same country, but I don;t see the same one you do. Maybe we should each consider the others vision.
consider a few counter ideas to your premise, which like many right wing beliefs blames our problems on the poorest among us. Given they have the least power, this is not the 1st place I’d look.
However that is the 1st place you did look. You assumed dependency is limited to the poorest among us. My post made no mention of the poor, you did. Think of drug addiction and if you assume it afflicts only the poor, then you don’t understand this concept of dependency. Dependency in this context is the lack of self-reliance. There are many poor people that are self-reliant, or strive to be self-reliant, but due to circumstances avail themselves of social services provided by the state until they can once again become self-reliant. But self-reliance is the arch enemy of the administrative state. They are the dealers to a society that for a multitude of reasons became dependent on them, and in turn the state has become dependent on the dependent society.
I think we live in the same country, but I don;t see the same one you do.
I agree.
Olly, what you’re really advocating here is a Libertarian fairyland where everyone is self-sufficient and there’s little need for government. This fairyland fantasy springs from an oddly conflicted view of the world. A view where government is inherently corrupt and inefficient.
Yet Libertarians are brightly idealistic with regards to big corporations. Somehow Libertarians always miss those Wall Street Journal stories about corrupt inefficient companies. It never occurs to Libertarians that corporations can also be forces of tyranny.
Do you have any glosses which aren’t fantasies?
So Anon assumes I’m a right-winger blaming the poorest among us and P.H. assumes I’m a libertarian not blaming the richest among us. Clearly reading comprehension is not chief among your attributes.
But self-reliance is the arch enemy of the administrative state. They are the dealers to a society that for a multitude of reasons became dependent on them, and in turn the state has become dependent on the dependent society.
There exists an unhealthy dependency on the state in individuals, organizations, institutions and corporations. It’s unhealthy because the dependency is not born of a lack of ability, but rather a lack of desire to be self-reliant. This dependency is fueled by the political class and in turn fuels the political class. Wash, rinse, repeat.
A view where government is inherently corrupt and inefficient.
There is a reason our constitution was intended to limit the power of government. Not because government was corrupt and inefficient, but because it would be animated by those who by their very nature are corruptible, thus leading to inefficiency. This is not just a domestic problem either. We’ve created a dependency upon the United States among foreign entities.
This is not a political party problem, this is a political class problem.
Progressivism is not a blueprint for governing. It is a blueprint for disaster. We have seen the wreckage in many places, but there is one thing progressives apparently need not fear: paying a political price for their misdeeds. As long as these electoral and governance patterns exist, progressives will expand their power bases — and continue to govern badly.
https://mises.org/wire/why-are-progressives-so-bad-governing-0?utm_source=Mises%20Institute%20Subscriptions&utm_campaign=7c4efb73b6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-7c4efb73b6-228626821
Recently I visited Long Beach CA. LB has homeless residents, but seemingly at a much lower rate than the average of the greater LA area. Certainly, the very highest ratio of visible homeless were black, by huge margin, over 90%. Visited McDonalds four times and only two guys sleeping there. Success!
The very largest concentration of homeless congregate right in front of the main entrance to the Catholic Church. Do they congregate there to be tortured by a RAY-cis church, or for charity and kindness, food, love, clothing, etc.? Do ALL those homeless blacks comprise ONLY the self-hating type? Hmm…
On a different note: when is someone gonna sue to rename every one of the Spanish names in CA, including…..well, start by listing about 90% of the city names, then street names, etc. You know, RAY-cis….
There was a certain cultural movement in Mexico to use Nahuatl and other indigenous languages and de-Hispanicize their situation there. Of course it was lead by a bunch of rabble rousing communists.
YES, to answer your question, eventually they will want to de-Hispanicize “Aztlan” or “Alta California” and give it more indigenous names. This very story is example of it.
Observe this cultural movement PRECEEDED the Zapatista rebellion of 1994.
What does that mean?
At some point the natives get restless and will take scalps, that’s what.
Think about it, fools! Before it’s YOUR scalp they take.
And indeed, if WE be the natives, then it is WE who should begin thinking about taking scalps to deter invasion.
Nature is not kind. It gives life, and we humans are born in blood and pain and right alongside the feces. Likewise nature uses death to take life, recycle and give life again.
“human rights “are a fiction. Suffering, pain, and death are the realities that every sane person integrates into their existence and does not deny as if we were all going to live fore-ever in harmony, etc etc etc. only abject fools talk that way all the time.
Given that it’s a Mestizo society where only about 2% speak any Indian dialect at home, kinda silly.
I don’t know if the Mexican enthusiasm for certain names like Cuahtemoc is because of that indigenous stuff or just the fact there’s some big statutes of him in Mexico City.
https://www.inside-mexico.com/10-most-popular-mexican-last-first-names-1/
“racism” is a rhetorical tool which has seen action in politics south of the border, too
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2511398?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
That is exactly what I was going write!
Yes, those Spanish names!
In our face constantly.
The Spanish that came for Gold a decimated the Natives.
The Spanish that Came for Gold, enslaved Natives, Raped and Pillaged.
Brought Diseases that wiped out Thousands.
In fact, isn’t Mexico really the ugly step child of Spain?
Isn’t supported by the Country that destroyed it, but forced to take on its language and Names.
Spanish American War, not Mexican American War.
Spain stole the Land. Not Whitey who they blame.
But those Facts are inconvenient in a PC Agenda.
Much like Palestinians are the Step Child Of Jordan. Who abandoned them, but Israel is to blame.
Much like Palestinians are the Step Child Of Jordan. Who abandoned them,
WTF are you talking about? The Arab population in Jordan is multifaceted. It consists of (1) descendants of the Bedouin and town Arabs in situ in 1946 (who’ve favored the Eastern Bedawi and Nejdi dialects), (2) people who migrated from west of the Jordan in 1947-49 (who favor Levatine dialects), (3) people who migrated from west of the Jordan in 1967 (ditto), and (4) labor migrants who generally arrived after 1973 (who are modally Egyptian). There are small communal population like Circassians and Samaritans. Presiding over it all are the Royal Family, who have intermarried with other sorts of Arab but who arrived in the territory from the Hijaz in 1921. They didn’t ‘abandon’ anyone. They lost control of the West Bank in the 1967 war. They co-operated with Israel in certain matters in re government of the West Bank for the succeeding 20 years. However, they acceded to the diplomatic stance of the other Arab governments adopted in 1974 that they not be the representative of the West Bank population anymore. (They never had anything to do with Gaza). They eventually washed their hands of the territory. The King’s men on the West Bank aren’t numerous, so there wasn’t much point in maintaining any claims or responsibilities there.
Good lord if you don’t see the similarities in the metaphor, I’m not going to waste my time with you.
WTF
That describes one group who aren’t allowed to learn about the past but it even more so describes those who do remember the past and ask for it to be repeated.
THERE SHOULD BE A 10 YEAR WAITING PERIOD
FOR CHANGES STUDENTS WANT TO MAKE TO UNIVERSITIES
If the change is truly warranted and desired, it can wait a decade.
Peter, that is a surprising breath of fresh air and was recognized by our founders. That is why changes to our Constitution were intentionally difficult to do. We were supposed to pass amendments rather than have judicial activism.
How is activism ‘judicial?’ I think not. Children still doing their homework do not speak for adults
Well, there goes the Taco Bell franchise.
Taco Hell? Now there is a worthy cause. It has no reason to exist.
Michael……….If the Taco Bell logo irritates and offends the Liberals, then that is the reason for it to exist.
“Well, there goes the Taco Bell franchise.”
good riddance
Social Justice Warriors are lobotomizing Western Civilization, a culture that brought most of the advancements of the modern world and jurisprudence. The United States is part of Western Civilization.
Activists have made a fatal reasoning flaw. They believe that the world of antiquity should be judged by today’s mores. That’s anachronistic. The evolution of our civilization should be judged in the context of its own time.
Instead of teaching the important discoveries from around the world, like the advances in Chinese medicine, such activists ascribe to cultural relativism. They live in quite literally the freest country in the world, but consider it the same as Afghanistan. Instead of valuing their freedoms, opportunities, and rights here, they are diligently working to destroy the country – going after one Constitutional right after another and striving towards the great ruin of Socialism.
They seem completely unaware that it was the Conquistadors who stopped the Aztecs from sacrificing hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children by tearing out their beating hearts. Some tribes conquered other tribes, and enslaved or tortured prisoners. When conquistadors lost horses, they were captured by Native Americans, who became equestrian cultures. They used horses to wage war on their own enemies, and bartered with them.
These students are not being taught that they live in one of the statistically least racist countries in the world. That racism still exists in the African continent, where it was African tribes who sold their enemies to European slavers. Recent African immigrants might have actually owned slaves in their home countries, while the SJWs want reparations from Americans who never had anything to do with slavery. These students are not being taught our history, or they would be proud that our country was on the forefront of abolishing slavery.
And as for reparations, I find the very suggestion outrageous. Hundreds of thousands of men who’d never owned slaves died to free the slaves from a small minority of people who did. We plunged the entire country into turmoil and civil war to free them, at a time when slavery existed globally. Its abolishment was one of the great avant guard advancements of society. Our country gave wounds to the South that are still felt today, as the aftermath of Sherman’s March to the Sea is remembered. Almost an entire generation of men on both sides were lost, leaving their families to poverty. The misery of the mothers, wives, and children must have been overwhelming. We did pay reparations, in blood. England paid slaveowners for releasing their “property”, but it did not pay the slaves. Neither the English government, nor ours, was responsible for the existence of slavery, which was a global institution. Rather than be punished, both countries should be lauded for abolishing it. The descendants of African slaves owe their country their gratitude. It was tribal warfare in Africa that sold their ancestors into slavery. Sure, I wish Americans had abolished slavery earlier, and I sure wish it could have happened without a civil war, but that’s the thing about advancement. It is an evolution of its own. You might as well wish that birds had evolved flight earlier.
Reparations gives the message that African Americans still cannot make it on their own. They are helpless and they depend upon the government to care for them cradle to grave. What kind of low self esteem does such a mentality require? Isn’t such a message from politicians and activists a terrible racist insult, due to the history of slavery? Do they have any idea how many people arrived at our shows penniless, or from injustice, or they had some injustice occur here? They were not expected to sit on their hands until some other person came and fixed everything for them. They were responsible for making it. Many American Asians lost everything they had during WWII, and there was intense racism due to the war. And yet, they flourish, because their culture would have it no other way. It is not slavery’s fault for widespread poverty among African Americans. Studies have irrefutably shown it’s the rampant single motherhood and absentee fathers. Fix that problem, and they will thrive. African Americans are fully capable of succeeding, en masse, the same as anyone else. This victim profiteering among politicians is just a method to get votes.
Students are not taught that. They are taught that they are victims, and they are owed. Imagine, paying reparations to the corrupt African governments that not only are comprised of the descendants of those who sold their enemies to slavers, but where slavery still exists today.
Karen………I wish you had your own tv show as a forum for your perspective!!You have such a great way of expressing what you know to be true.
Excellent however far too lengthy for the target audience still struggling with ABC’s. Children should be preferably not seen and never heard which according to the anti gun lobby doesn’t occur until 20 years, 364 days, 11 months, three weeks, six days 23 hour 59 minutes and one second after 59 seconds.
Lord, I know. I need an editor with a red pen.
Unless one is getting paid by the word… — by some right-wing outfit. If so, no need for “a red pen.”
Karen,
Your posts might be high in word count, but they are by routine, factually accurate and they reflect well reasoned arguments. Others on this blog will complain about the word count because they cannot process the actual content without their eyes glazing over.
Keep up the great work!
OLLY-O jumps on the Karen S bandwagon:
“Your posts might be high in word count, but they are by routine, factually accurate and they reflect well reasoned arguments. … Keep up the great work! (OLLY-O is a fan.)
Like this “great work”:
https://jonathanturley.org/2019/06/17/students-demand-removal-of-oregons-100-year-old-pioneer-statue/comment-page-1/#comment-1858586
“Why don’t students know their history?” (Asked by Karen S)
And then she tells us:
“The First People in America were the Neanderthals.”
It’s easy to pull the wool over OLLY-O’s eyes.
I see you’ve moved to another hot spot after Darren banned you.
If you only had a clue…
Yup.
Another clueless one heard from. Some guy who calls himself “OLLY.”
I suggest you learn more about the evolution of modern man – Neanderthals, Denisovans, Cro-Magnon, etc.
The paleoanthropologists and paleobiologist have been excitedly arguing over the past couple of years about a study suggesting that Neanderthals made it to the New World before Modern Man. The drama will probably go on for a few more years at least.
“Prehistoric humans — perhaps Neanderthals or another lost species — occupied what is now California some 130,000 years ago, a team of scientists reported on Wednesday.”
Recent scientific discoveries include that dinosaurs were warm blooded, some had feathers, birds evolved from theropods, and that there were several offshoots from the human family tree. We have also discovered that people with European or Asian ancestry have approximately 2% Neanderthal blood.
Even if the most recent studies are excluded, and you ignore the recent development about Neanderthal migration, the Clovis pre-dated current Native Americans. They were not first, however, as there is evidence that there were multiple migrations from Eurasia, and the Clovis were merely among the earlier migrants. The Clovis genes were incorporated into later Native American genetics, in much the same way that Neanderthal genes were. Considering the long history of enslaving prisoners and conquered tribes, such a process may not have been consensual.
This is all very recent and exciting, opening up a vista of new research possibilities. In any case, referring to Native Americans as First Nations or First People is not correct. There were multiple waves of human migration, which some studies suggest even included other species of humans. You will note that the land does not perpetually belong to the first human beings who set foot on it, and their descendents. All of these people traded and fought with each other, and their lands changed hands many times. In the context of reparations, you could spend a hundred years trying to untangle who owes whom, going back to paleolithic times.
“I think we’re moving toward understanding that the peopling of the Americas was not a singular event like the Clovis-first model would have us believe,” Waters said.
Instead it “was a process with people probably arriving at different times and taking different routes and potentially coming from different places.”
John Johnson is an archaeologist and ethnohistorian at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in California.
He said the new study and other archaeological research suggest that there were people in place from coast to coast prior to what is known as the Clovis horizon.
“It implies that people here adapted the Clovis technology [of spearpoints], that people didn’t arrive full-blown with this technology,” he said.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2007/02/native-people-americans-clovis-news/
Thanks, Olly!
Karen is a liar. When corrected on a BS charge, she produced volumes of quotes – which by the way disproved her lie – but refused to retract it while pretending it was still somehow true.
She can’t be trusted to do the right thing and correct factually wrong statements. We all have our own opinions, but it should be everyone’s goal to at least get the facts right so our opinions are based on knowledge, not mistakes and wishes.
I gather the folks at Correct the Record told you projection is a useful tool.
Anon, first, I am a woman, and therefore must be believed, according to the Democratic Party.
Second, I have repeatedly refuted your statements with evidence, on a wide variety of topics. Once your assertion is disproven, you disappear.
In regards to FOIA discoveries:
“We learned about one such tool in another email sent by Secretary of State John Kerry’s Deputy Chief of Staff Jonathan Finer (6 days before he was named Chief of Staff – and more importantly, exactly one week after the State Department falsely told Congress no funds were used to influence the Israeli election) to Wendy Sherman, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, among others. That email contains a memo describing the creation of a video posted to the Facebook page of V15-Victory 2015 (the group with which OneVoice partnered for this campaign) showing:
a person going to the polls, while Binyamin and Sarah Netanyahu pack their things. When the voter casts her ballot, the door to the prime minister’s residence slams shut behind the Netanyahus. At the end of the video, the polling official tells the voter: “Thank you. Good bye.” The accompanying post states: ‘On 17 March, we’ll tell Bibi thank you, good bye.”
This is clear evidence that high-ranking State Department officials were keenly aware of OneVoice’s true intentions to “replace the government” of Israel.”
Further evidence of the Administration’s involvement, and that it misled the American people:
“As the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs concluded, OneVoice absolutely “did use the campaign infrastructure and resources that it had built, in part, with State Department funds to support a campaign to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu in the 2015 elections.”
So not only did the Obama Administration know of this anti-Israel group’s true intent at the time it was sending U.S. taxpayer funds to it and it knew that one of its leaders was none other than Abbas’s son, but it then covered it up.”
Note that there were a series of emails turned over by the State Department as fart of the FOIA requests, which means they were in possession of the communications.
Another example:
“Ginsberg sent another email (which was in the State Department’s possession) including an article he penned in August 2014 entitled “Can Gaza Ever be Pacified?” In it, Ginsberg criticized Israel’s military operations and suggested that Israel should take steps to “re-empower the moderate Palestinian Authority and its president Mahmoud Abbas.” This plug of support for Abbas is unsurprising, however, in light of the revelation in documents we previously obtained that Abbas’s own son is a senior adviser to OneVoice Palestine.”
As I stated previously, it wasn’t illegal for the Obama Administration to meddle in Israel’s elections, undermining Netanyahu, but it was wrong to interfere with our ally. The point is that it is hypocritical to complain about election interference when we do it all the time to many other nations, including our allies.
Karen continues in her pettifogging attempt (no link, unattributed quotes, and no dates) to cover up her lie and is beneath contempt.
In an earlier post she led off by quoting – in large type – one of her right wing sources to the effect that (paraphrasing) “Obama made every effort to interfere in an Israeli election and unseat Netanyahu.” That is a lie. What did happen is that Obama’s State Dept approved a grant in early 2014 for a non-profit organization promoting a 2 state solution to the Israel/Palestinian conflict. That has been US policy for decades and across all party lines and was also -until recently – Netanyahu’s policy. The grant ran out without being renewed in November of 2014. Netanyahu called for a previously unknown 2015 parliamentary election in December of 2014, or after any more funds were approved. The organization still had some limited funds left over at this point which they used with another organization in that election against Netanyahu.
A Senate Committee which investigated the incident found no legal wrong doing or intentional efforts to influence the election but faulted the State Dept for lax oversight.
“A State Department grant intended to rally support for peace between Israel and Palestine also helped set up political infrastructure that was later used for a campaign opposing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015, according to a bipartisan Senate investigative report released on Tuesday.
The report found no legal wrongdoing by the State Department, since the $349,000 in grants for OneVoice were used to further the Middle East process as intended. But shortly after Netanyahu called an election for 2015, the voter databases constructed with the grant money were activated for Victory 15, an unsuccessful effort to defeat Netanyahu.
Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) each signed off on the investigation, which was conducted by Portman’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In releasing the report, Portman criticized the State Department for lax oversight and for undermining a U.S. ally.
“The State Department ignored warning signs and funded a politically active group in a politically sensitive environment with inadequate safeguards,” Portman said. “It is completely unacceptable that U.S. taxpayer dollars were used to build a political campaign infrastructure that was deployed — immediately after the grant ended — against the leader of our closest ally in the Middle East.”
The investigation is notable for its bipartisan sheen. McCaskill highlighted the conclusion that it showed “no wrongdoing” by President Barack Obama’s administration but said the report “certainly highlights deficiencies in the Department’s policies that should be addressed in order to best protect taxpayer dollars.”….”
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/state-department-grant-netanyahu-225414
Karen continues to assert – by failing to retract it – that “Obama made every effort to interfere in an Israeli election and unseat Netanyahu.”. Only an idiot or a liar would take her conclusion from the facts of this matter. She’s too smart and is therefore a liar.
The subcommittee uncovered evidence, some of which I quoted, that OneVoice sent multiple communications to State before, during, and after the grant period clearly showing their determination to undermine Netanyahu. State was fully aware, and provided the communications in response to a FOIA. This also proved that the Obama Administration lied to the American people about it.
I also said, that “everything he had” was clearly hyperbole, as it would entail a nuclear bomb or germ warfare. The committee found that it was not illegal to have meddled in Israel’s election, just wrong.
The US has repeatedly meddled in the elections of other countries, including our ally Israel.
You should admit that you were wrong and apologize for your atrocious name calling, including your sexist remark earlier that I wasn’t woman enough and your gonads were better than mine. For shame.
Karen, you are lying again and misrepresenting the information, none of which supports your original lie, which was to the effect that “Obama made every effort to interfere in an Israeli election and unseat Netanyahu.” In fact the Senate Committee explicitly disagrees with you and faults the State Dept for lax control, not a conspiracy as you claim. Obama is not personally mentioned in the report nor is it clear – or likely – he knew anything about it. You’re a liar.
“The Subcommittee concludes:
• OneVoice Israel fully complied with the terms of its State Department grants.
OneVoice designed and executed a grassroots and media campaign to
promote public support for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations for the
Department, as it said it would. Under the grant, OneVoice expanded its
social media presence, built a larger voter database, and hired an American
political consulting firm to train its activists and executives in grassroots
organizing methods in support of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
• The Subcommittee found no evidence that OneVoice spent grant funds to
influence the 2015 Israeli elections. Soon after the grant period ended,
however, OneVoice used the campaign infrastructure and resources built, in
part, with State Department grants funds to support V15. In service of V15,
OneVoice deployed its social media platform, which more than doubled
during the State Department grant period; used its database of voter contact
information, including email addresses, which OVI expanded during the grant period; and enlisted its network of trained activists, many of whom
were recruited or trained under the grant, to support and recruit for V15.
This pivot to electoral politics was consistent with a strategic plan developed
by OneVoice leadership and emailed to State Department officials during the
grant period. The State Department diplomat who received the plan told the
Subcommittee that he never reviewed it.
• OneVoice’s use of government-funded resources for political purposes was not
prohibited by the grant agreement because the State Department placed no
limitations on the post-grant use of those resources. Despite OneVoice’s
previous political activism in the 2013 Israeli election, the Department failed
to take any steps to guard against the risk that OneVoice could engage in
political activities using State-funded grassroots campaign infrastructure
after the grant period.”
Here’s the report:
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/OneVoice%20Report.pdf
PS There is nothing sexist about stating the fact that most of us possess gonads, but that some don’t act like it. Clearly you’re in that category. I proved mine by simply and clearly retracting something I said in an earlier discussion with you and stated “i was wrong and Karen was right”.
Grow a pair.
Oh shut up Anon. You sound like a prat
Devastating jjule. You make excellent points in your exegesis of the issue.
Anon – FOIA information revealed that OneVoice was open about its intentions before, during, and after the grant process, and that the infrastructure built with the grant was used to oppose Netanyahu. There is nothing illegal about us meddling in other countries’ elections, but the fact remains that we do it all the time. State also did not direct OneVoice not to meddle in the election, which is why OneVoice did not break the terms of the grant. It also openly supported the Palestinian Authority, which opposes the existence of Israel. In fact, the leader of OneVoice is none of other than Yasser Mahmoud Abbas, son of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. If you do not understand how supporting the Palestinian Authority during the Israeli election is meddling, let alone the blatant, and openly stated purpose of getting Netanyahu out of office, then nothing will get through.
I did not write that Obama “made every effort”, rather that was in the article that I posted discussing interfering with the election. What I wrote was that “made every effort” was obviously hyperbole, which was why I also included a quote that toned down that rhetoric. Every effort would include a nuclear bomb, shock and awe, assassination attempts, etc. However, the administration financially supported an organization led by the son of the PA, there is a strong document trail discussing their problems with Netanyahu, and that they wanted him out of office.
What the FOIA requests revealed is that not only was State fully made aware of OneVoice’s intentions, but that it lied to the American people about it.
So, the United States provided aid to the movement to oust Netanyahu, and then the Administration lied about it. However, you take issue with one single phrase in the multiple articles that I posted concluding that we interfered in Israel’s election. Mind you, I stated that the phrase was obvious exaggeration. I myself included the link to the Committee findings for you, and discussed how it was found that since State didn’t stipulate they could not take such actions, OneVoice was not sanctioned. Then I included FOIA requests.
I did not even include our efforts in other countries, all over the world. You are having a very hard time accepting that we meddle in elections, and I haven’t even brought up Kabul.
And, yes, obviously, calling me not woman enough or not a match for your gonads is a sexist statement. Sometimes, a workplace conduct review uses very small words to explain this to people who don’t understand. I do sincerely hope that you don’t speak to female coworkers at your company in this manner, and that it’s just anonymity going to your head. It does provide a most excellent example of the double standard among the Left.
A simply apology would suffice.
A simply apology would suffice.
ROTFL. David Brock doesn’t hire people who apologize.
Anon:
You said, “There is nothing sexist about stating the fact that most of us possess gonads, but that some don’t act like it. Clearly you’re in that category.”
You deny making a sexist comment, while simultaneously saying that I don’t act like I have gonads. Ironic.
“Grow a pair.”
Then you make another sexist comment. More irony.
Great example of the Leftist double standard. Again, do you ask the females at your workplace about their gonads, or compare them to your own?
I’ll go toe to toe with you any day, Anon, on any issue, and I don’t need your apparatus to do it. If I don’t let draft horses push me around, I most certainly have no problem dealing with your false accusations and frat boy sexism.
In any case, once again, here is my original comment. Please note that it was a block quote from the article, and contained zero commentary by me.
https://jonathanturley.org/2019/06/13/trump-i-would-accept-dirt-on-political-opponents-if-offered-by-foreign-governments/comment-page-2/#comment-1857754
And here is an article that Bill Clinton admitted he also tried to prevent Netanyahu’s election.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/bill-clinton-admits-he-tried-to-help-peres-beat-netanyahu-in-1996-elections/
“Former US president Bill Clinton acknowledged for the first time that he tried to help Shimon Peres win Israel’s general elections in 1996 against Benjamin Netanyahu.
In an interview broadcast on Israel’s Channel 10 news on Tuesday, the former president, who has not made a secret of his difficult relationship with Netanyahu, admitted intervening on Peres’s behalf in the elections that were held six months after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin because, he said, he saw Peres as more supportive of the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort.”
The only problem you had was with the phrase that Obama gave it everything he had. I’ve already told you that’s hyperbole, as he didn’t have him assassinated. The claims about meddling in the article were supported. I have included where Bill admitted on camera that he also meddled in Israel’s election. I will include in another post the Goldberg article.
Ready to admit that the US meddles in other countries’ elections yet? Do I need to include the YouTube video of Bill Clinton admitting, on air, that he did?
So sayeth Anon, the Hole Factchecker of the Abominable Impaction
LOL, Cindy.
Karen could tell us all about the Neanderthals…and so many other things that she “know(s) to be true.”
https://jonathanturley.org/2019/06/17/students-demand-removal-of-oregons-100-year-old-pioneer-statue/comment-page-1/#comment-1858586
Merely pointing to a comment but not saying what you disagree with makes no sense.
If you are confused, then explain what you don’t understand and I will clarify. Before disputing something, you should do the research.
Why didn’t you just ask me what the status of the paper’s conclusion was? I would have told you.
Whenever there is a new discovery or paper, there can be discussion and argument that goes on for years.
Are you the one who keeps getting banned for refusing to follow the civility rule, but keeps using new avenues to enter the site, continuing the same behavior?
“Are you the one who keeps getting banned for refusing to follow the civility rule, but keeps using new avenues to enter the site…”
Nope.
Here’s one response:
https://jonathanturley.org/2019/06/17/students-demand-removal-of-oregons-100-year-old-pioneer-statue/comment-page-1/#comment-1858595
“This is absurd x 9 says: June 17, 2019 at 8:43 PM
“No, Karen, there were never any Neanderthals in the Americas. The single best guess about the peopling of the contents is that there was a synthesis of three distinct groups of migrants (Siberian, Austronesian, &c) which took place in Alaska roughly 15,000 years ago.
“And that’s anthropology, not history.”
That’s a blog post comment, not a scientific rebuttal. He was not aware of the Smithsonian or the arguments for, or against it.
Why are you so troubled by the Neanderthal issue? It doesn’t take Neanderthal migration to prove that current Native Americans were not the first here. We already know of multiple earlier migrations. For instance, as I noted earlier, the Clovis were one of the earlier migrants, and the survivors’ DNA got absorbed into later migrants tribes.
The whole I-was-here-first argument doesn’t hold water, and doesn’t account for the fact that tribes pushed other tribes out of their lands throughout history. No one’s borders stayed the same unless they could defend it.
Why do you think there were tribes that eked out a living in the harsh deserts of the West, with a lower life expectancy than tribes in better lands?
there’s a lot in that post Karen thank you very thought provoking.
I might observe that manumission of slaves by law, such as you refer to in England, and was carried out in many other countries like Brazil, was a peaceful way to solve the problem. America had too many slaves, and the Congress was too cheap to consider it anywhere outside some very small exceptions, and prefered to pay the price in blood of white Yankee enlisted men who were endless cannon fodder.
“Studies have irrefutably shown it’s the rampant single motherhood and absentee fathers. Fix that problem, and they will thrive. African Americans are fully capable of succeeding, en masse, the same as anyone else”
I would pick two bones with that. First of all, IQ has an effect, even though everybody pretends it does not. So too, as the leftists say, does inherited cultural advantages like wealth and education. The leftists are not lying that those are multigenerational advantages, of course they are. It’s as stupid for right wingers to deny that, as it is for left wingers to deny that IQ matters. So too does culture as in habits of work, but culture is formed over centuries not years.
Moreover, the breakdown of the family unit affects all Americans. Whites are seeing a destruction of the family just as blacks did earlier on. We are all impacted. And that “culture” of atomization is inherent to America and it will certainly continue onwards on its own momentum. Radical changes in culture forming agents like higher education and mass media and laws, which could reverse it? Not possible with the current ownership of education, mass media and laws. The current ownership of America LIKES THE ATOMIZATION OF THE FAMILY. It will not abate. The outlook is grim.
While I would not have had the slaves in servitude a second longer than they were, I sure wish our country had found a peaceful way to achieve it in the same timeframe. One that did not tear the country apart. They still call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression in the South, and they remember some of the atrocities done with clarity. From my seat as Captain Hindsight, we should have been able to abolish slavery peacefully. A big roadblock then, is the same argument Democrats still use to support illegal immigration – who will pick our crops and do the dirty jobs? It’s crazy how that argument keeps recirculating in the same party, without a shred of irony.
I agree with you that the breakdown of the nuclear family affects any race or ethnicity in much the same way. It is more common among the African American community, but on the rise elsewhere, as well. Having a kid out of wedlock is no longer viewed as negatively as before.
What is difficult is that when the family breaks down, the kids are raised in poverty, and then they grow up to be single parents themselves who don’t care about marriage or an education, and each generation raises their kids to have the same poor values and self destructive habits. Since nurture is such a large part of our development, then we are seeing multigenerational impoverished families. I don’t know how to stop it. Church outreach, maybe. Or after school programs like Harlem Kids Zone. Government is no substitute for a father.
Our fortunes are all connected, so something needs to be done to break this spiraling cycle gathering momentum.
As for your argument on IQ, statistically, men test with a higher IQ than women. Ashkenzai Jews, followed closely by Asians, have the highest IQ. No one says that if you’re not Jewish or Asian, you can’t be a genius or successful. The gender IQ gap has always been quite small, and is narrowing. There was an interesting study that found a correlation between height and intelligence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20066931
“Consistent with our suggestion, we show that men may have higher IQs than women because they are taller, and once we control for height women have slightly higher IQs than men.The correlation between height and IQ and the female advantage in intelligence persist even after we control for health as a measure of genetic quality, as well as physical attractiveness, age, race, education, and earnings. Height is also strongly associated with intelligence within each sex.”
I have no idea of the quality of the study.
In any case, it is the individual that matters here in America. The problem with IQ studies along racial or gender parameters is that it leads to bias when applied in the wrong context. I am female, and yet I tested with a high IQ, and have some degree of aptitude in both right and left brain activities. I worked in science, but also love to write and paint. Generalities do not define us. Each individual should have the same opportunities. Were such IQ studies to be taken into consideration or used to form policy, then I might never have been accepted into a science major, or employed in a scientific field. While it is true that women statistically do not favor STEM fields, individual women can more certainly be talented in such.
That is why I don’t find IQ statistics particularly useful, as opportunities should be thrown open to anyone with an interest and ability. Let other people argue about testing or study design or mating selection. Behavior statistics, on the other hand, are useful in that they show that the gender employment gap in STEM is mainly due to a statistical lack of interest. As long as individual women with talent are not shut out, then it is not a problem when STEM is majority male, but rather reflective of freedom of choice.
“In any case, it is the individual that matters here in America.”
No it’s not just the individual. We are all social beings. That slogan is exactly at the heart of why conservatives keep failing and losing to the Left. We need to embrace belonging and relatedness and not just accept being isolated particles. There is no other way to win in war. And life is war.
IQ is a factor, a measure of certain cognitive capacities. It certainly does not achieve anything in itself. All the other factors matter too. Certainly, individual will matters most. And there are other cognitive aspects it does not measure. But, it measures what it does, and is useful in many contexts.
I think Gladwell was fair to IQ as a factor it in his book “Outliers” which covers the importance of two other main factors: cultural habits– not to be underestimated! and work, specifically, long long hours of practice to develop important skills.
At least Gladwell admitted IQ existed; at least he talked about Richard Lynn. Today they pretend IQ is just another form of racist and Lynn is some low minded chav running his mouth off in a pub.
Reparations in a nutshell:
620,000 soldiers died so that slaves could be free, in a time when slavery was global, and had existed since before recorded history. Men who had nothing to do with slavery died to free them, leaving their own families to suffer poverty without their support.
Instead of saying thank you, and honoring their sacrifice, the descendents of slaves point an accusatory finger at the descendents of those who freed them and say they owe them more, and they will hate them anyway. This is all because Leftist politicians, activists, and teachers have taught them since infancy to hate their country and be racist against whites, in order to get votes.
There is no greater sacrifice than to die to save others. The debt has been paid.
Yes the great irony often lost on ardent racists who blame black people for this dynamic is that it’s a certain managerial class overwhelmingly populated by white skinned people who profit from the racial extortion game, while blacks remain poor and powerless.
Just as, in the end, it is the richest “capitalists” who profit the most from cheap labor supply.
Things are complicated and if we have facile minds we can handle it.
“Instead of saying thank you, and honoring their sacrifice, the descendents of slaves point an accusatory finger at the descendents of those who freed them and say they owe them more, and they will hate them anyway.”
You got it Karen. The left is encouraging hatred.
“You got it Karen. The left is encouraging hatred.”
No more than the right “is encouraging hatred.”
I’m encouraging the staff at the assisted living center to strap you to your chair.
It’s relative, but the left of today is based on hatred, just look in a mirror.
Dr Ben Carson is a perfect example of a man able to rise above his impoverished beginnings.
Mom who could not read or write demanded her boys to get an education.
Parents have been brainwashed into believing the School will do it.
The Government will do it .
And that is perfect for the Democrats/ Rinos continued demise of community.
If African Americans get reparations, then who else does? What about the fact that women didn’t have the vote until fairly recently? Couldn’t own property? Many jobs were closed to them. What do the Mohawk owe the descendants of tribes they wiped out? The Irish? The Chinese railroad workers? Or the cache Climate Change Reparations?
The list of grievances is global and as long as recorded time. What are you going to do, punish innocent people today because their ancestors didn’t evolve quickly enough? That’s not how either biological or cultural evolution works. There is no way to sort out how much the sons and daughters owe today for the sins of their fathers and mothers. If they did, then the money paid to black people would be taxpayer money, that also came from black people in the form of higher taxes, which would hurt jobs, which would lead to more black people out of work. And then once you start reparations for one group, there would be more groups with their hands out, for wrongs dating back hundreds of years. So then the taxes would go up again, and then everyone, including black people, would experience the consequences of tax and spend.
Reparations is one of the many avenues to Socialism. There is always some platform for them to run on – some existential crisis or problem. Today, the catchwords are income inequality, Climate Change, and reparations. Just give up all your money and rights to Socialism, and the benevolent government will solve all your problems. Riiiiiiight.
Karen, I don’t totally disagree with your reasoning on reparations. But that culture of victimhood is by no means limited to left-leaning minorities. Trump supporters on these threads have completely embraced victimhood regarding the Mueller Probe.
“Trump supporters on these threads have completely embraced victimhood regarding the Mueller Probe.”
How is that, Peter? Trump supporters merely pointed out the illegality and the biased use of a special prosecutor that didn’t do his job, left out important details such as the reported lack of veracity of those documents that started the investigation. Take a look at the report on the black ledger I posted earlier.
Had Trump been guilty of the Russian accusations his base would have left him. Hillary was guilty of many of the serious accusations made against her and those that are immoral won’t even recognize the accusations as serious and true, much less walk away.
Allan – where did you post the report? I may have missed it.
Probably from The Hill but here it is.
FBI, warned early and often that Manafort file might be fake, used it anyway
When the final chapter of the Russia collusion caper is written, it is likely two seminal documents the FBI used to justify investigating Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign will turn out to be bunk.
And the behavior of FBI agents and federal prosecutors who promoted that faulty evidence may disturb us more than we now know.
The first, the Christopher Steele dossier, has received enormous attention. And the more scrutiny it receives, the more its truthfulness wanes. Its credibility has declined so much that many now openly question how the FBI used it to support a surveillance warrant against the Trump campaign in October 2016.
At its best, the Steele dossier is an “unverified and salacious” political research memo funded by Trump’s Democratic rivals. At worst, it may be Russian disinformation worthy of the “garbage” label given it by esteemed reporter Bob Woodward.
The second document, known as the “black cash ledger,” remarkably has escaped the same scrutiny, even though its emergence in Ukraine in the summer of 2016 forced Paul Manafort to resign as Trump’s campaign chairman and eventually face U.S. indictment.
In search warrant affidavits, the FBI portrayed the ledger as one reason it resurrected a criminal case against Manafort that was dropped in 2014 and needed search warrants in 2017 for bank records to prove he worked for the Russian-backed Party of Regions in Ukraine.
There’s just one problem: The FBI’s public reliance on the ledger came months after the feds were warned repeatedly that the document couldn’t be trusted and likely was a fake, according to documents and more than a dozen interviews with knowledgeable sources.
For example, Ukraine’s top anticorruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, told me he warned the U.S. State Department’s law enforcement liaison and multiple FBI agents in late summer 2016 that Ukrainian authorities who recovered the ledger believed it likely was a fraud.
“It was not to be considered a document of Manafort. It was not authenticated. And at that time it should not be used in any way to bring accusations against anybody,” Kholodnytsky said, recalling what he told FBI agents.
Likewise, Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Konstantin Kilimnik, a regular informer for the State Department, told the U.S. government almost immediately after The New York Times wrote about the ledger in August 2016 that the document probably was fake.
Manafort “could not have possibly taken large amounts of cash across three borders. It was always a different arrangement — payments were in wire transfers to his companies, which is not a violation,” Kilimnik wrote in an email to a senior U.S. official on Aug. 22, 2016.
He added: “I have some questions about this black cash stuff, because those published records do not make sense. The timeframe doesn’t match anything related to payments made to Manafort. … It does not match my records. All fees Manafort got were wires, not cash.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and the FBI were given copies of Kilimnik’s warning, according to three sources familiar with the documents.
Submitting knowingly false or suspect evidence — whether historical or to support probable cause — in a federal court proceeding violates FBI rules and can be a crime under certain circumstances. “To establish probable cause, the affiant must demonstrate a basis for knowledge and belief that the facts are true,” the FBI operating manual states.
But with Manafort, the FBI and Mueller’s office did not cite the actual ledger — which would require agents to discuss their assessment of the evidence — and instead cited media reports about it. The feds assisted on one of those stories as sources.
For example, agents mentioned the ledger in an affidavit supporting a July 2017 search warrant for Manafort’s house, citing it as one of the reasons the FBI resurrected the criminal case against Manafort.
“On August 19, 2016, after public reports regarding connections between Manafort, Ukraine and Russia — including an alleged ‘black ledger’ of off-the-book payments from the Party of Regions to Manafort — Manafort left his post as chairman of the Trump Campaign,” the July 25, 2017, FBI agent’s affidavit stated.
Three months later, the FBI went further in arguing probable cause for a search warrant for Manafort’s bank records, citing a specific article about the ledger as evidence Manafort was paid to perform U.S. lobbying work for the Ukrainians.
“The April 12, 2017, Associated Press article reported that DMI [Manafort’s company] records showed at least two payments were made to DMI that correspond to payments in the ‘black ledger,’ ” an FBI agent wrote in a footnote to the affidavit.
There are two glaring problems with that assertion.
First, the agent failed to disclose that both FBI officials and Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who later became Mueller’s deputy, met with those AP reporters one day before the story was published and assisted their reporting.
An FBI record of the April 11, 2017, meeting declared that the AP reporters “were advised that they appeared to have a good understanding of Manafort’s business dealings” in Ukraine.
So, essentially, the FBI cited a leak that the government had facilitated and then used it to support the black ledger evidence, even though it had been clearly warned about the document.
Secondly, the FBI was told the ledger claimed to show cash payments to Manafort when, in fact, agents had been told since 2014 that Manafort received money only by bank wires, mostly routed through the island of Cyprus, memos show.
During the 2014 investigation, Manafort and his partner Richard Gates voluntarily identified for FBI agents tens of millions of dollars they received from Ukrainian and Russian sources and the shell companies and banks that wired the money. “Gates stated that the amounts they received would match the amounts they invoiced for services. Gates added they were always paid late, and in tranches,” FBI memos I obtained show.
Liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz said FBI affidavits almost never cite news articles as evidence. “They are supposed to cite the primary evidence and not secondary evidence,” he said.
“It sounds to me like a fraud on the court, possibly a willful and deliberate fraud that should have consequences for both the court and the attorneys’ bar,” he added.
Former FBI intelligence chief Kevin Brock was less critical. He said mentioning the ledger in an affidavit for its historical relationship to Manafort’s firing and the start of the investigation might be defensible, but any effort to use the ledger to support probable cause would be “puzzling” since it clearly was not needed to strengthen either affidavit and only risked tainting the warrant. He said it could raise questions about why the special counsel believed it necessary to refer to the ledger in the probable cause narrative.
In the end, the best proof that the FBI knew the black ledger was a sham is that prosecutors never introduced it to jurors in Manafort’s trial.
Rep. Mark Meadows, a senior Republican on the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, told me Wednesday night he is asking the Justice Department inspector general to investigate the FBI and prosecutors’ handling of the Manafort warrants, including any media leaks and evidence that the government knew the black ledger was potentially unreliable or suspect evidence.
The question of whether the Mueller team should have used the ledger in search warrant affidavits before that is for the courts to decide.
But the public has a substantial interest in questioning whether, more broadly, the FBI should have sustained a Trump-Russia collusion investigation for more than two years based on the suspect Steele dossier and black ledger.
Understandably, there isn’t much public sympathy for foreign lobbyists such as Manafort. But the FBI and prosecutors should be required to play by the rules and use solid evidence when making its cases.
It does not appear to have been the prevailing practice in the Russia collusion investigation. And that should trouble us all. __John Solomon
And that should trouble us all.
Allan,
Thanks for sharing that article. Unfortunately, you know the only thing some will find troubling is that it didn’t work.
I think the Hillaryites have taken “election victimhood” to new heights.
Will Congress approve reparations to those who are still traumatized?
And will Trump sign it?
Tom, you yourself acknowledge once that it had been about 150 years since a candidate won the Popular Vote by a 2% margin and still lost the Electoral Vote. Flukes like that don’t go unnoticed.
Peter, get over it. Trump won and if the rules said the popular vote would win Trump would have won the popular vote but he didn’t have the funding and resources to go after both votes. Hillary did and she lost.
Peter,
I repied to your comment but it did not post…..I’ll just summarize part of it . Trump’s Electoral College victory while losing the popular vote was the 5th time that has happened, out of a total of c.55 presidential election in U.S. history.
It happened in 1876, were the one elected trailed in the popular vote by at least 3%.
It happened again 12 years later in 1888, when there was a very small <1% different in the popular vote. It almost happened in 2004, when a relatively minor shift in Ohio's vote would have give the election to Kerry, despite him losing the popular vote by c. 3,000,000 votes.
The U.S. in the late 19th Century survived those two unusual election results…..they are uncommon, but not a "fluke"…..and proceeded to take its place as a major power on the world stage. I doubt if there were even a tiny fraction of the whining that followed Trump's 2016 upset win.
The E.College system is here to stay. That compromise was worked out, that debate settled, about 230 years ago. The losers now are not as good at dealing with the occasionally upset win, or a win when losing the popular viote.
No one knows what the totals in the popular vote "would have been" had the candidates campaigned strictly to win the popular vote; it would almost certainly change the outcome of the popular vote, even though many like to pretend that the c.2% margin of victory in the popular vote for Hillary would be exactly the same.
No matter how much complaining there is about the Electoral College system, it isn't going away. There are about 30 states that would never approve a Constitutional Amendment to do away with it, and support from 20 states won't get it passed when it takes about 35 states to approve a amendment.
I was very surprised that Trump won, and almost as surprised to see the length of the "mourning season" and the level of whining about it for over 2 1/2 years and counting.The attempts to undo Trump's victory started on the day he was inaugerated, if not sooner.
Those hopeful that an "insurance policy" or other methods would yank that win away from him are going to have to deal with their disappointment. And maybe try to defeat him in an election after he's finished a full term. This static in the House and on TV with the Adam Schiff or Gerald Nadler is virtually meaningless as far as actually leading to impeachment, and has a good chance of backfiring if those committee chairman continue their opposition research via Congressional Committee for another c. 17 months.
There is a misunderstanding on what the victim mentality means. It doesn’t mean you cannot be wronged. It refers to an ideology in which people are helpless to improve their circumstances in life. Any issue they have with their situation has nothing at all to do with their behavior, but rather someone or something else is responsible – institutionalized racism, some old white guy, etc.
Victim profiteering is a great way to get votes, apparently. How many decades have Democrats promised to solve the problems of minority communities? What would actually solve their problems is to reject single motherhood as a vocation. We need to see the return of the nuclear family, and responsible parents, including fathers. That would not only life many minorities out of poverty, but it would improve the entire country. It might deal a death blow to gangs. So many promising young lives have been lost to misguided politics.
As for the Mueller probe, Barr is currently investigating alleged wrongdoing in the intelligence community and elsewhere. We will have to see what he finds out.
Karen, the issue of single motherhood is no longer limited to Blacks. As good paying jobs have disappeared, an increasing number of Whites have put off marriage indefinitely. The student loan crisis is guaranteed to exacerbate this trend.
Did I say that only African Americans have single motherhood?
No, I did not.
African Americans have the highest rates of single motherhood, but the statistical consequences for single motherhood and absentee fathers are the same no matter the demographic.
The student loan crisis was another well meaning government program gone astray. When students and their parents saved up to go to college, or worked hard to earn a scholarship, then college meant something. There was pressure to make it count, and choose a major with an employable degree. Affirmative Action and quotas sent a lot of unprepared students to college, whereas before everyone there had earned their spot, regardless of race. Student loans funneled a lot of money and students to colleges. In response to the proliferation of student loans and academically unprepared students, colleges created activist degrees, like gender studies, queer studies, chicano studies, community organizing, communications, basketweaving, advocacy and social justice studies, there’s even a surfing degree.
These degrees are utterly worthless in the jobs market for anything other than an aspiring college professor or Acorn employee.
The drivers of poverty and gang violence is the social acceptance and proliferation of single motherhood. The government and Nancy Pelosi can’t do squat to fix that. People have to reassert themselves and hold the bar higher. That doesn’t mean that single mothers need to wear a scarlet letter, but men women need to expect more out of life and out of themselves.
The idea that reparations would fix anything in the black community is nonsense. It is the poor that suffer most from higher taxes, because it drives up jobs that the poor need to get ahead. In the name of helping them, Democrats would once again destroy the black community. Between the Green New Deal and reparations, they would destroy the lowest unemployment ever recorded for minorities and plunge the country into dystopia.
The government is not here to save them. Politicians are there to get elected and have cushy well paying jobs in DC with extremely long breaks. A true public servant would admit when a policy he or she championed had unintended negative consequences and fix it. But what do you hear every single time that Republicans try to reform Welfare to stop punishing nuclear families and get people back on their feet? Racism and war on the poor.
Victimhood has a bad name. it’s about group forming consciousness and tribal cohesion. it is what it is. Learn to use it or lose to it.
I think when you lose a war, you assimilate. Pretty simple.
“The Amah Mutsun are the direct descendents of the tribal groups whose villages and territories fell under the sphere of influence of Missions San Juan Bautista and Santa Cruz during the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.”
CONVERSION is now called “Falling under the influence”
It’s the university admins that are OWI with their own stupidity, under the influence of the foreign ideologies that now infest the stinking halls of academe!
This is a despicable act of iconoclasm.
Christians and most of all Catholics should be outraged.
People of Hispanic (Spanish) ancestry and that may include mesitzos who identify with the glorious cultural heritage of Spain, should question this vain gesture in the name of “indigenous” who expired centuries ago.
The idea of destroying cultural artifacts with historical importance to redress some grievance rooted in centuries old conflicts is very suspicious at best, and at worst is usually some self important person of today trying to elevate their own position in the name of these long dead others.
Resist it! It will not end until there is sufficiently hard push back in the other direction.
IMHO, the larger cultural problem involves the promotion and glorification of any words, symbols, people, ideologies, etc. above others. John Donne’s poem, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” makes the point that the greatest and the least of humanity are all a part of humanity. And that “Each man’s death diminishes me.” Our cultural value judgments shift over time and what was great and honorable at one time now must be condemned. The problem is not that each one is inherently good or bad, but rather our overzealous moral perspective on it. If we removed our self-righteousness from the equation, we could recognize these symbols for what they are: “Each is a piece of the continent, part of the main.”
Something does come to mind
Sen. Cory Booker is sponsoring a reparations bill that does not include:
Native American Indians, Chinese railroad slaves, Japanese who were sent to US camps during WWII & Irish child slaves. If I missed some, please add.
Ethnic Japanese interned during the war were indemnified 30 years ago. There were no ‘Chinese railroad slaves’ or “Irish child slaves” (unless wage earning under disagreeable conditions is now ‘slavery’). About 1.8% of the population claim aboriginal ancestry (a great many of whom are not to be found on tribal rolls). Indian reservations account for 2.5% of the land area of the United States. If you think it’s trash land, we can allocate more from the huge inventory of federal grazing land and woodland.
Indian reservations in the midwest certainly aren’t trash-land, and that’s part of why they can situate such profitable casinos. They’re often also richly forested, and parts under cultivation (probably leased out).
TJ,
You missed reparations for Spartacus and the other slave gladiators.
Sen. Booker of all people should have been sensitive to that group. 😄
While the Roman Empire is long gone, Booker and other reparation advocates could at least propose hitting up Italy for a few lira.
TJ,
Come to think of it, the descendants of those Christians thrown to the lions or otherwise persecuted should also have something coming in the way of reparations.
Italy could be in for a world of hurt when tab for reparations is tallied up.
It’s interesting you should say that, Tom. For centuries Catholic churches featured macabre paintings of Christians being tortured by gleeful Romans. These paintings formed mini-galleries towards the very back of churches. I have a copy of one such painting. It depicts gleeful Romans using what appears to be a modern bolt cutter to rip the nipple off a Christian woman’s breast. Said woman is calmly stoic knowing Christ is looking on. The rational behind this art was to remind Christians of their persecuted origins.
he refers to saint agatha of sicily
Peter,
I went to Catholic schools for 10 years, through the 6 the grade.🤔
( Just kidding; through the end of my Sophomore year).
During that 10 year period of sometimes attending mass a dozen times a week at 3 different Catholic churches, I never saw the kinds of images you mentioned.
(We were hearded off to mass daily at school, right before lunch. And if I was assigned to serve as an altar boy at the early AM mass, that’d be 10 a week.
Plus Sunday, and possibly a wedding or funeral).
I’ve probably attended mass at about 10 out if town churches, and did not see those kind if images there.
Also, there was nothing like that in out textbooks for religion class.
The stained glass windows in the churches I’ve been in might feature images of the Stations of the Cross, Jesus holding a lamb, the Acsension or Assumption, etc.
Tom, when I said ‘for centuries’, I didn’t necessarily mean the 20th Century. Those macabre galleries may have fizzled out by age Napoleon.
Understood….thanks for clarifying.
The best macabre Catholic art is in Spain, in my opinion. I really like the murals of Santiago Matamoros,,, aka St James the Moor-Killer
This is in Cordoba
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_James_Matamoros#/media/File:Santiago_Matamoro,_Cordoba,_Spain.JPG
there is a church in Madrid, I forget which, has a a very grisly collection near the rear, like Peter said. I really enjoyed my visit to that one. Wish I could remember the name!
The best macabre religious art was of course by a Greek, Domenico Theotokopoulos, who lived in Spain. hence, “El Greco”
Destroying history is a bad idea. While on the one hand the Spanish were oppressive and violent, many of the monks who worked in these missions attempted to stop the abuses. The Spanish used the “Church” as many do today to oppress. It would be good if we all listened to the bells and remembered the whole story of how violent men use religion to oppress humans.
Like the violent Aztecs they conquered, who used to genocide one nameless and forgotten little tribe after another, hauling them all atop the pyramid to cut their hearts out to their false idols.
I’d take the Spanish over them any day!
And draftees under the Conscription Acts.
They won’t be satisfied until the nation has no form, no dimension and no color. Nothing but flat- white everywhere. No wait, that won’t work.
lol right
yes erase all ethnic and national differences and nation states will fall. then without any borders to impede the flow of capital from one corner of the globe to the other, they will get even richer
this is why the Soros supports only those ethnic groups which are opposing majorities, to weaken and destroy nation states as such, and usher in the world with a perfect form of “Free Trade” under a global regime of human rights etc etc etc
destroying religions and families and even something as basic as gender identity is part of same strategy
This appears to be part of a modern day iconoclasm?
Did anyone really think it would stop with the removal of Confederate Monuments from the
public square?
Saying anything positive about traditional America or its founders will be a hate crime in another 30 years.
Do you really think speech codes will stop at the university?
antonio
The schools name in English is uc of the Holy Cross!
Temporary feel good/change nothing. Those in their early 20s will always need causes upon which ro pin their vulnerable psyches. The “Search for Meaning,” etc. Herding behavior driven by Internet outrage. I guess it’s the the present and the future.
The administration didn’t need any convincing. In fact, it’s a reasonable wager it was a pantomime, with someone stoking the complainers to file a bogus grievance to which the administration could ‘respond’.
In truth, previous generations had accomplishments, accomplishments which make the pampered faculty and administration at UC Santa Cruz look rather silly. These libels are a psychological game.
As for the professional Indians with their grievances, they’re losers. Their ancestors survived as hunter-gathers, as pastoralists, and occasionally as cultivators. That has a certain rigor and dignity. They didn’t achieve anything beyond that (at least nowhere near Santa Cruz), and the loci where they did achieve something, their conduct was frankly gruesome. Their descendants are of two sorts: (1) people who function passably in the civilized order others have built around them and (2) manifestations of anomie.
Erase the history to erase the national culture. Then impose your own. It’s simple and insidious and only the mush-headed and guilt-ridden would offer up their culture this way. It’s infuriating that the stewards of our culture would act like this but as in most every other aspect of life, every betrayer gets a reckoning. I’m anxiously awaiting theirs.
The academics doing this don’t consider it ‘their’ culture. They consider themselves a superior successor class to the producers of this culture, and despise the heirs and adherents to it. They’re Bourbons.
True enough. But I like the allegory of Donne’s poetry here. The funeral bell will toll for these cultural traitors, too.
“Erase the history to erase the national culture. Then impose your own. ”
This is a continuous cycle of the most recent group imposing their own culture on others which is waiting to be destroyed by the next wave of SJW. In a way this is nihilistic and should be recognized by ending their own beings so as not to be the type of people that today they condemn.
Allan a perceptive comment
But there is no chance they will voluntarily self immolate. It was actually Nietzsche’s answer to nihilism that inspired the method of “trans-valuation of all values” as a way for people and groups to impose their “will to power” as an exultant “yea saying to life” — or so his words became interpreted.
he was not an antisemite as his profiteering niece Elizabeth was, but you can see where the nazis went with these ideas. And indeed it’s very fair to say the post war European Left was inspired by it too, and they melded into what we call “cultural marxism” which owes a big part of its pedigree to Fred.
and yet how to transcend this? I’m not really sure. On some level we are stuck with the cruelty of Nature which knows no favorites. And generally on the strongest and cleverest groups will thrive.
Americans, not as clever nor as strong as we used to be.
“Americans, not as clever nor as strong as we used to be.”
An empty belly promotes strength and ingenuity.
What culture…
Yeah when those Cat O Lics came on the scene they advised people to stop killing each other. My Dog! Who can have Faith? I might add that when the Indians came over from India and started forming tribes they insulted the folks back home in India. As an Osage I say damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead! And to Hell with religion. Those who believe in Christ do not really like Santa Clause.
‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ George Santayana