Twilight Zone 2016

This one was forwarded from someone who saw it on FB:

"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind." 

A new civil rights agenda

photo credit: therightplanet.com

A couple of days ago, I posted a chart demonstrating the radical agenda of Black Lives Matter as it relates to race riots in Charlotte and elsewhere. It’s an important subject in this election season, especially since candidate Donald J. Trump is going where few GOP candidates have gone: into the inner cities to explore a “new civil rights agenda” with black leaders such as Pastor Darrell Scott and Sheriff David Clarke.

Thomas Sowell, an economist and one of my favorite contributors to various blogsites, had an article yesterday at Town Hall entitled ‘Favors’ to Blacks. His comments are particularly on topic as to why a “new civil rights agenda” is in Trump’s platform. Here are some extracts:

Back in the 1960s, as large numbers of black students were entering a certain Ivy League university for the first time, someone asked a chemistry professor -- off the record -- what his response to them was. He said, "I give them all A's and B's. To hell with them."

Since many of those students were admitted with lower academic qualifications than other students, he knew that honest grades in a tough subject like chemistry could lead to lots of failing grades, and that in turn would lead to lots of time-wasting hassles -- not just from the students, but also from the administration.

He was not about to waste time that he wanted to invest in his professional work in chemistry and the advancement of his own career. He also knew that his "favor" to black students in grading was going to do them more harm than good in the long run, because they wouldn't know what they were supposed to know.

Such cynical calculations were seldom expressed in so many words. Nor are similar cynical calculations openly expressed today in politics. But many successful political careers have been built on giving blacks "favors" that look good on the surface but do lasting damage in the long run.

One of these "favors" was the welfare state. A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of racial oppression.

In 1960, before this expansion of the welfare state, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent. By 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent.

A big "favor" the Obama administration is offering blacks today is exemption from school behavior rules that have led to a rate of disciplining of black male students that is greater than the rate of disciplining of other categories of students.

. . .

But Washington politicians are on the case. It strengthens the political vision that blacks are besieged by racist enemies, from which Democrats are their only protection. They give black youngsters exemptions from behavioral standards, just as the Ivy League chemistry professor gave them exemption from academic standards.

In both cases, the consequence -- unspoken today -- is "to hell with them." Kids from homes where they were not given behavioral standards, who are then not held to behavioral standards in schools, are on a path that can lead them as adults straight into prison, or to fatal confrontations with the police.

This is ultimately not a racial thing. Exactly the same welfare state policies and the same non-judgmental exemption from behavioral standards in Britain have led to remarkably similar results among lower-class whites there.

. . .

If a “new civil rights agenda” honestly confronts such issues and explores real solutions, I am all for it. Some of those real solutions will involve eliminating destructive government interference and shrinking the welfare state. Those are Tea Party values.

Read the entire article here.

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Hillary’s track record as Secretary of State

photo credit: businessinsider.com

Betsy McCaughey contributed a post-debate essay today to The American Spectator website. The article, “Failure at Foggy Bottom,” examines Hillary’s track record running the Dept. of State:

Hillary Clinton boasts that her experience traveling to 112 countries as secretary of state qualifies her to be president. Don’t believe it.

At the end of her taxpayer-funded audition on the world stage, she came home empty-handed, with no meaningful gains for the United States. Voters are too smart to be wowed when she rattles off names of Islamic terrorist splinter factions and third-world capitals.

Evidence shows she left the State Department in shambles and our nation weaker. If anything, her record at Foggy Bottom should disqualify her to be president.

. . .

This presidential race is a contest between a builder and a blabberer. The builder, Donald Trump, manages 185 major business ventures around the globe. Until 2009, Clinton had never run anything. Running the State Department was her chance to prove she could do it. She failed miserably.

Read the chapter and verse here.

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Drunk blogging the debate

If you can't bear to watch, or if you don't have a television, you can go to PJ Media's Stephen Green -- Mr Vodkapundit - who is drunk-blogging the debate. Go here. 

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Black Lives Matter protests

Clarice Feldman is always a good Sunday read (Clarice's Pieces at American Thinker). Yesterday's column on the race riots in Charlotte, George Soros, and Black Lives Matter included the above chart via Zero Hedge:

What is most disturbing is that behind the pent up rage and thuggish violence, dressed up in the socially-acceptable package of "black lives matter" is the reality that white violence is the last thing blacks should be "protesting."

Powerful graphic. (If you have difficulty embiggening the chart, the category to which the arrow points is "Blacks killed by whites.")

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Preview of tonight's debate

By Branco at Legal Insurrection:

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Yet another continuing funding resolution

art credit: quotesgram.com

The Uniparty is poised to strike again. 

From Rick Moran at American Thinker:

[Sen. Mitch] McConnell urges passage of 'bi-partisan' funding resolution. 

With less than 6 days to go before the government runs out of money, Congress will vote this week on a stop gap measure that would fund the government through December.

What is not in the Continuing Resolution [CR] is far more significant than what it contains. Not included are any controversial policy riders. Funding the battle [against] the Zika virus is included, but at reduced levels.

 . . .

The fact that the CR funds the government at levels agreed upon last year is irrelevant. Those levels are unacceptable because they add tens of billions to the deficit. The military is upset because the reduced funding agreed to will hamper operations and readiness. 

About the only people who are truly happy with this CR are the bureaucrats who will once again be able to expand their power through additional funding.

If this is "bi-partisanship," give me gridlock every day.

Amen to that. Read the rest here, including extracts from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s statement.

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