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December 2016

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“Education – The Selection of Betsy DeVos” Sydney M. Williams

By on December 7th, 2016

There is nothing more ferocious than a cornered animal. That description fits the leaders of the two major teachers’ unions – the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Both lashed out when Donald Trump nominated Betsy DeVos to take on what is perhaps the toughest and most important job in the new Administration – Secretary of the Department of Education. Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the NEA, said: “By nominating Betsy DeVos, the Trump administration has demonstrated just how out of touch it is with what works best for students, parents, educators and communities.” Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, was blunter: “In nominating DeVos, Trump makes it loud and clear that his education policy will focus on privatizing, defunding and destroying public education in America.” The irony is that those two have stood in the way of reform. It is time the status quo is challenged. A good education, next to family, is the most critical element in determining future success and happiness. For too long, unions have focused on teachers and administrators, not students and parents. This has been especially true in those districts most in need of help.

Both unions had a financial stake in the defeat of Mr. Trump. Based on data through October 28, the NEA had contributed $23.3 million to political causes in 2016, with 98% going to Democrats. The AFT had given $10.3 million, with 100% going to Democrats. Both have a stake in maintaining what is not working. Studies suggest that 40% of high school graduates are not prepared for college, and that 20% are not qualified to serve in the armed forces. Something is wrong. Albert Einstein once famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Throwing good money at bad schools, with no little or no choice for parents and students and little or no accountability on the part of teachers and administrators has not worked.

Betsy DeVos is the person chosen to breach those walls – walls that thus far have proven invincible. Her selection by Mr. Trump shows that he is serious about reform. She has been trashed by those who see her as a threat, not only the heads of the two unions who have the most to lose, but reporters as well. Valerie Strauss, an education reporter for The Washington Post used incendiary language in an article titled, Trump terrifies public school advocates with education secretary pick. She claimed that Ms. DeVos’s proposals would promote segregation, discriminate against students with severe disabilities and fight public oversight. The implication was that Mrs. DeVos would destroy public education. Reporters for The New York Times, Kate Zernike and Kevin Carey, were equally provocative. Neither reporter mentioned unions, nor did they see any value in competition, choice, or accountability when it comes to education and teachers.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Donald Trump Picks Retired Gen. John Kelly to Head Homeland Security Four-star Marine general led the U.S. Southern Command and troops in Iraq; his son was killed in Afghanistan By Gordon Lubold and Damian Paletta

By on December 7th, 2016

WASHINGTON—Donald Trump has picked retired Marine Gen. John Kelly to head the Department of Homeland Security in his new administration, people familiar with the decision said Wednesday.

The move would put a military commander who directly supervised U.S. operations in Central and South America in charge of one of the president-elect’s signature platforms: securing the border between Mexico and the U.S.

Gen. Kelly would become the second retired Marine general to join Mr. Trump’s cabinet. Both he and retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, the choice for defense secretary, must be confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. Trump also has tapped retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser. And he is considering whether to nominate Adm. Michael Rogers to be the director of national intelligence, and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus as secretary of state, although there are several candidates for that post.

In addition to Gen. Mattis and Gen. Kelly, the chairman of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joe Dunford, also is a Marine and will be in that post through most of 2017.

Gen. Kelly’s last job was as chief of the U.S. Southern Command, the division that oversees U.S. military activities south of Mexico, including Central America, South America and the Caribbean. As Southern Command chief, Gen. Kelly focused on homeland-security issues, because his post involved monitoring drug trafficking and other illicit smuggling activity south of the U.S.

Gen. Kelly’s views on immigration and tightening the border were likely to have appealed to Mr. Trump. Before retiring, Gen. Kelly testified that the border between Mexico and the U.S. was too loose. “The border is, if not wide open, then certainly open enough to get what the demand requires inside of the country,” he said during congressional testimony.

Mr. Trump has vowed to erect barriers between the U.S. and Mexico, despite controversy and criticism about the potential cost. As a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump traveled earlier this year to Mexico and met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Obama Defends His Antiterror Strategy in Arguments Aimed at His Successor President draws contrast between his ideas and those of Donald Trump By Carol E. Lee

By on December 7th, 2016

President Barack Obama on Tuesday defended his strategy for combating terrorism, despite the emergence on his watch of the Islamic State group and the expansion of the conflict in Syria.

Mr. Obama, in a national-security speech delivered just weeks before he leaves the White House, repeatedly drew a contrast between his ideas and those of Republican President-elect Donald Trump while making a case for why his successor should adhere to his approach, which was shaped by his early decision to scale back America’s military presence overseas. Mr. Obama also pointed to his administration’s ban on torture, including waterboarding, and to his longtime effort to close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“We have to take a long view of the terrorist threat, and we have to pursue a smart strategy that can be sustained,” Mr. Obama said at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. “We can get these terrorists and stay true to who we are.”

Mr. Obama said the clearest evidence his strategy has succeeded is that “no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland, and it’s not because they didn’t try.”

Attacks in Europe have rattled Americans, as have several apparently Islamic State-inspired shootings in the U.S. Mr. Trump campaigned on being tougher on Islamic State and suggested the vetting of Muslims in the country.

A Trump transition spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment on Mr. Obama’s speech.

While he didn’t mention Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Obama had a clear message for his successor on foreign policy. He argued for using diplomacy before military power, pointing to the deal with Iran to restrain its nuclear program, which Mr. Trump has said is deeply flawed.

He also said the U.S. doesn’t impose religious tests and that “protecting liberty” is something the U.S. does for all Americans, not just some. Mr. Trump has proposed curbs on immigration by Muslims.

On closing Guantanamo Bay, one of Mr. Obama’s earliest and unfulfilled promises, Mr. Obama said the “politics of fear” has kept the facility open and that until Congress changes course on its refusal to allow the transfer of detainees to U.S. prisons, “it will be judged by history.”

“And I will continue to do all I can to remove this blot on our national honor,” Mr. Obama said.

Matthew Levitt, who was deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Treasury Department during the George W. Bush administration, said that beside Mr. Obama’s digs at Mr. Trump, “the speech was most interesting for what it left out: any real answer to the fact that terrorist threats are worse now than when he came to office, according to most intelligence officials.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Cancer Breakthrough Aids One Patient, Raises Hopes for Many Researchers use a woman’s immune cells for new therapy to reverse her metastatic colon cancerBy Thomas M. Burton

By on December 7th, 2016

BETHESDA, Md.—National Cancer Institute researchers have produced an immune-cell therapy that for the first time successfully targeted a genetic mutation involved in causing tens of thousands of gastrointestinal cancers.

The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, focused on only one patient whose metastatic colon cancer was completely reversed. But that patient’s unusual story may hold promise for many others, doctors said. The therapy targets a gene mutation estimated to drive more than 50,000 new cases of GI cancers in the U.S. each year, including about 90% of often-lethal pancreatic cancers and 45% of all colorectal cancers.

The NCI laboratory is headed by famed immune-therapy researcher Steven A. Rosenberg, the chief of surgery at the cancer institute. He has previously published landmark findings showing that immune therapy has effectively treated many patients with metastatic melanoma, as well as those with blood cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. The technique also proved successful in a bile-duct cancer case reported in 2014. NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health, which is based here.

Targeting the commonly-occurring family of cancer-driving genes known collectively as RAS has been a kind of Holy Grail in oncology. Mutations in the subset of RAS genes known as KRAS are believed to be a driving force in most pancreatic cancers, which have a bleak survival rate, and in nearly half of colorectal cancers, the No. 2 cancer killer in the U.S. after lung cancer. In this case, the targeted mutated gene is known as KRAS G12D and is the most common of the KRAS gene mutations.

“We report the regression of metastatic colon cancer,” wrote the researchers, headed by Dr. Rosenberg and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Eric Tran. The researchers calculated that tens of thousands of patients annually could potentially be eligible for this treatment.

Dr. Rosenberg said that while the therapy depends on each patient’s own immune cells, it is potentially transferrable to many other patients because of receptors in the patient’s immune cells that grab onto the cancer. These anti-KRAS receptors can be widely used as a treatment, he said.

“This is truly exciting,” said Axel Grothey, a Mayo Clinic oncologist. “At this point in time I consider the presented data as an intriguing proof of principle that cellular immune therapy can be used to target cancer cells with specific molecular alterations. That alone is important and could represent a game-changer in the future.”

“This is really important,” said Leonard Saltz, chief of gastrointestinal oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “It isn’t changing treatment today, but it may change it tomorrow.” He expressed caution because this is just one case, but said, “This is a terrific translation of elegant science into a real benefit for this patient, so in that respect it’s very exciting.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Donald Trump Taps Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to Lead EPA Republican has been harsh critic of agency, fought Obama’s environmental regulations By Amy Harder and Peter Nicholas

By on December 7th, 2016

WASHINGTON—President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a transition official, choosing a harsh critic of the agency to take its helm.

As the chief legal officer of a big oil and natural-gas producing state, Mr. Pruitt, a Republican, has led legal fights against some of President Barack Obama’s most significant environmental rules.

Mr. Pruitt has touted his leadership role in fighting the EPA rule that cut power-plant carbon emissions, as well as an EPA measure that put more bodies of water under federal jurisdiction. Both of those rules have been temporarily blocked by federal courts as litigation proceeds.

In choosing a legal official to head his EPA, Mr. Trump could be signaling that legal action will be central to his plans to repeal a raft of regulations, something he promised on the campaign trail.

The Obama administration has issued an array of regulations, most originating at the EPA, aimed at cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, including a high-profile rule that would reduce carbon emissions at power plants. Mr. Trump has vowed to repeal that rule, called the Clean Power Plan, and a host of others related to climate change and other environmental issues.

The selection of Mr. Pruitt reflects a request by some on Mr. Trump’s transition team that his cabinet—currently heavy on close allies and rich business people—should also include state officials and others not closely associated with the president-elect.

Mr. Pruitt wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Mr. Pruitt has been a close ally of the oil and natural gas industry, whose influence in Oklahoma rivals its clout in even Texas. Fifteen percent of Oklahoma’s GDP comes from oil and natural gas, second most in the country after Alaska, according to Kevin Book, managing director of research firm ClearView Energy Partners LLC.

Oklahoma City is also home to Continental Resources, whose founder and CEO, Harold Hamm, is a top energy adviser to Mr. Trump, as well as an ally of Mr. Pruitt’s.

“He understands the regulatory stranglehold that the EPA has had on industry during the Obama administration,” Mr. Hamm said of Mr. Pruitt Wednesday. “I believe that he will work to unleash prosperity in America through the proper use of regulations and adhering to the rule of law.”

Mr. Pruitt has pushed back against a group of Democratic attorneys general who are investigating ExxonMobil Corp.’s handling of climate-change science in recent decades. Mr. Pruitt has indicated he questions the scientific consensus that human activity is helping raise the Earth’s temperature, though he has been less outspoken about it than some other candidates Mr. Trump was considering to head the EPA, such as former Texas environmental regulator Kathleen Hartnett White. CONTINUE AT SITE

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

DANIEL GREENFIELD: A DAY OF INFAMY AS IT WOULD BE REPORTED TODAY

By on December 7th, 2016

A Date That Will Live Forever in Infamy

Naval Base Bombed, Shinto Worshipers Fear Backlash – New York Times – December 8 1941

A day after planes passed over their peaceful village on the way to attack the Naval Station at Pearl Harbor, local fishermen are still picking up the pieces.

“I don’t know what any of this is about,” a man who would only give his name as Paji said, holding the remains of a net which he had used to earn a living. “All I know is that the killing has to stop.”

In Washington, government officials urged the public to stay calm and not to jump to any conclusions warning that such reactions might play into the hands of the militant extremists responsible for the attack.

Early copies of President Roosevelt’s upcoming speech to Congress likewise warn the American public of the dangers of overreaction.

“We are not at war with Japan,” it says. “We are at war with a tiny handful of extremists who are attempting to drag the Japanese people into a conflict. But we must keep a cool head and not allow them to win by provoking a war. We will defeat this enemy, but we will do it by not fighting them.”

A profile has emerged of at least one of these attackers. Hideki Nakamura, a graduate of Harvard and a talented oboe player, was shot down and captured. Nothing in his background, which included playing for the Harvard squash team, would have lead anyone to conclude that he was capable of such a thing.

KATANA, a local civil rights organization partly funded by Japan’s war propaganda office, has warned that American foreign policy is responsible for the radicalization of such young men like Nakamura.

“What made this man hate America so much that he wanted to bomb it?” a spokeswoman for KATANA asked. “How did America fail him? And how can we win him back?”

Nakamura’s guards have suggested that the pilot is soft-spoken and has pleasant manners, but that he becomes vocally exercised over the American embargo of Japan and the refusal of many universities to install rice paper doors in dormitories.

“Detaining Nakamura only inspires others to imitate him,” KATANA said, suggesting that he instead be released back to Japan where the government is running an anti-extremism program at the Strategic Institute of War that claims to be able to deprogram extremists with a 97% success rate.

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The Nationalist Spirit of 2016: A Conservative Spring The American and British turn against liberal internationalism is an opening. By David Brog & Yoram Hazony —

By on December 7th, 2016

Many conservatives are in mourning over Donald Trump’s electoral success. We’re not. Whatever one may think of Trump, and of the dramatic British vote for independence from Europe a few months ago, these events have opened the door to a rebirth of conservatism – and to a conservative movement that is both more authentic to its intellectual traditions and more politically relevant.

The chief conservative complaint about both Trump and Brexit is that they elevate nationalism, a focus on your own nation and people, at the expense of a more global agenda. They see this new nationalism as a betrayal of conservative ideology. We see it as a return.

Conservatives have been nationalists since the days Disraeli wrote novels in London. For Irving Kristol, for example, nationalism was at the center of conservatism. As he saw it, “the three pillars of modern conservatism are religion, nationalism, and economic growth.”

This is another way of saying that Kristol did not confuse conservatism with liberalism. He was firmly committed to entrepreneurship and free markets as the only road to economic prosperity. But he was also relentless in warning that, if left unchecked, liberal individualism and the profit motive would destroy the bonds of national unity, the family, and civility in public life.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Kristol renewed these concerns about the dangers of an unrestrained liberalism, proposing that religious revival and a renascent nationalism had to be “the very core of an emerging American conservatism.” Along these lines, he argued against the continuation of “liberal internationalism” (or “humanitarian imperialism”) in foreign affairs. He insisted that American energies instead had to be turned to meet the challenge of a fraying polity and of a society of isolated individuals set adrift by “secular, nonjudgmental education, bereft of moral guidance.”

This is a broad conservative outlook that both of us strongly identified with at the time. And we know we weren’t the only ones. But over the years, much of this vision was quietly dropped from the conservative agenda, and we found that we were nationalists in a movement that had somehow tilted global. We found ourselves astonished as friends talked of how America and Britain were going to bring democracy to Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. And while we continued to give two cheers for capitalism, we watched in dismay as an awareness that the Bible has to be at the center of any conservative politics was replaced by a cult of liberal individualism that sounded more like Ayn Rand than like William F. Buckley Jr.

What the vote for British independence and Trump’s election have in common is one big idea: the idea that a country isn’t just a heap of isolated atoms. That you can’t just sweep everyone into a borderless international marketplace as the be-all and end-all of their lives.

Another way of saying this is that America and Britain are still nations. Many people in these countries still believe that there’s something unique and important about their history and traditions. Something that binds them to their ancestors and to untold future generations. And it isn’t the disgusting white racism, either, that some in the media want us to believe American and British conservatives are now all about. It’s something fundamentally decent and good that the great majority of Americans and Brits believe these countries stand for and that those who cast a nationalist ballot in 2016 hope to see awakened again.

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The U.S. Should Abandon the Paris Agreement and Learn from China The Clean Power Plan, too, risks America’s industrial future. By Rupert Darwall

By on December 7th, 2016

One of the first items of business for the Trump administration will be to decide what to do with the Paris Agreement. In September, the Obama administration deposited with the United Nations general secretary an instrument accepting the Paris climate treaty without first asking the Senate for its advice and consent. As matters stand, the United States is now bound to the Obama administration’s target of reducing economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The domestic counterpart of the Paris Agreement is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan — also crafted to avoid congressional approval — which is how the Obama administration intends for the U.S. to achieve its Paris obligations.

During the presidential election, Donald Trump denounced one-sided trade deals for destroying American jobs. The Paris Agreement is the mother and father of one-sided deals. It requires the United States to keep cutting its emissions in perpetuity irrespective of what anyone else does. Unlike the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (which the Senate would have rejected had Bill Clinton sent it to the Senate), there are no escape hatches. It forces the U.S. to play by its own rules while letting everyone else play by their own. Short of repudiating the whole treaty, once on the escalator, there’s no way off.

It is the latest product of U.N. climate conferences that kicked off with the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Canadian Maurice Strong organized the Earth Summit. His genius was to see that government leaders and bureaucrats don’t like being left out. If you put negotiators from different countries in the same room, the pressure will be on them to find points of agreement. In that way, the U.N. created a climate-change process that acquired a momentum of its own. “The process is the policy,” Strong told an aide at the 1972 U.N. Stockholm conference on the environment, which Strong also organized. What appears important to delegates at the negotiating table are the detailed policy commitments, when what really matters is keeping the process going so that it sucks in more power, influence, and money.

Because the process develops a logic of its own, it ends up producing ridiculous positions that the nations of the world nonetheless sign on to. Article 2 of the Paris Agreement sets a new goal of limiting temperature increases to only 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It had been cooked up by the Alliance of Small Island States. Along with polar bears, the small island states are featured as the prime victims in the climate-change morality tale: innocents on remote islands condemned to be swept away in a flood of biblical significance, to pay for the climate sins of the rich.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

U.S. Leaders Don’t Answer to Beijing by Fred Fleitz

By on December 7th, 2016

According to the mainstream media, foreign policy experts and Democrats, President-elect Donald Trump made a serious error when he accepted a phone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen congratulating him on winning the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s critics apparently believe Mr. Trump is not allowed to speak with the president of one of the world’s leading democracies and a close friend of the United Stats because the Chinese government forbids this.

Sorry, but China does not tell American officials who they can and cannot talk to. Despite the 1979 decision to open diplomatic relations with China and withdraw diplomatic relations with Taiwan, America and Taiwan remain close friends. We sell Taiwan billions of dollars in military hardware. America may have an unofficial relationship with Taiwan, but this does not mean our leaders should shun or insult Taiwan’s president.

Trump’s critics claim his decision to accept Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s congratulatory phone call indicates he does not understand foreign policy. I disagree. This was an act of leadership by a president-elect who plans to enact a new U.S. foreign policy that rejects President Obama’s failed foreign policy of retreat, appeasement and leading from behind.

The Donald Trump-Tsai Ing-wen phone call also could reflect an intention by the Trump administration to reevaluate America’s relationship with Taiwan and possibly upgrade relations. Such a move is long overdue. Taiwan is by any measure a thriving democracy and an independent state. Although the United States in 1979 recognized that China and Taiwan believe in a “one China” policy, the U.S. government has never officially endorsed this position. Instead of a U.S. embassy or consulate in Taipei, the United States maintains a nonprofit center known as the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which operates as a barely unofficial embassy. Trump advisers are right in considering whether it is time to reevaluate U.S.-relations with Taiwan and the AIT. These advisers include China expert Peter Navarro, who contributed to the Center for Security Policy’s recent book on the growing threat from China, Warning Order: China Prepares for Conflict, and Why We Must Do the Same.

Instead of piling on Donald Trump for taking a phone call from the leader of a U.S. ally, Trump critics should be focusing on how the lack of global leadership by Barack Obama created a power vacuum in the Asia-Pacific region that emboldened China to engage in belligerent actions to seize control of almost the entire South China Sea. This action is endangering the economies and security of America’s friend and allies in the region and also threatens freedom of navigation in a crucial sea area.

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The Near Miracle Called America By Dr. Robin McFee

By on December 7th, 2016

For those of us who love our country – it is refreshing to hear someone of stature describe the US as a near miracle of great global good; such sentiments are not often spoken in the modern era of globalism and anti-American rhetoric. Thankfully there seems to be an emergence, a renewal perhaps, of interest in our nation’s birth, as evidenced by the best seller lists of non-fiction. Thank God……

Because…. this tempestuous election year I found myself withdrawing into a sort of intellectual womb – trying to satisfy a need for political inspiration or at least connecting with folks who forged the greatest nation in the modern world – our nation. Perhaps you, too, found the need to go back in time to when it all started. And then trying to make sense of how we could get so far from the Framers’ intentions for the republic. So like Ben and Jerry’s for the brain, I’ve been binging on the writings of our founding fathers. Books like The Quartet, The Fever of 1721, Washington’s Secret Six, The Jefferson Bible, Hamilton, Faiths of our Fathers, The Federalist Papers, and similar.

Speaking of which….have you ever read the Silence Dogood letters? If not, may I suggest going online and reading those insightful missives that appeared in James Franklin’s New England Courant? Beyond being good literature, they take political satire and moral commentary to a level not readily viewed in early 18th Century America. That a largely self taught adolescent wrote them, all the while quoting some of the great philosophers (such as Cato) in their native language ought to impress, even if that young man happened to be Benjamin Franklin. Consider our nation was forged by adolescents of intellect and courage – Benjamin Tallmadge, Nathan Hale, Alexander Hamilton, and so many others – all of whom not only would be familiar with, they would be conversant about Cato, Voltaire, Cicero, Plato, Virgil, Epictetus, and similar. On the other hand, if I asked the average adolescent who Cato was, if I didn’t get a blank stare, the answer would likely be the Green Hornet’s side kick. And as for quoting, let alone reading Latin or Greek – unless the child is a prodigy or fortunate to attend a private school or exceptional public school – good luck with that. Yet nearly 300 years ago one might argue the average person was far more literate, even if not as well educated, as our average citizen.

More is the pity, because the Framers designed our nation around the notion of the citizen statesmen, and that the foundation of our country would be an engaged citizenry. I think if they listened to the average citizen today, most of the founding fathers and mothers might want to rise from the grave just so they could die all over again.

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