Boorish grads boo U.S. Ed. Sec. Betsy DeVos

Commencement season brings with it prominent speakers to bestow words of wisdom on graduates as they leave the confines of academia and prepare to make their way in the world. In generations past, the speakers were greeted with cordiality as the eager college seniors looked forward to putting their years of education to good use.

Unfortunately, times have changed. Many students, such as those at U of Calif. Berkeley, are practiced rioters. Twelve previous years of El-Hi have inculcated them with massive doses of liberalism — five days a week, 180 days a year. Rioters are not alone.  There are now a substantial number of “snowflakes,” who react negatively to instruction or issues they disdain, needing safe spaces, soothing music, coloring books, puppies and hot cocoa to comfort them.

They are products of non-competitiveness, where everyone on the team gets a participation award, but there are no actual winners, or conversely, losers. The prospect of hurting a losing competitor’s feelings is too unbearable to comprehend. Graduates who are unable to speak grammatically correct English are indicative of the lack of time spent on communication skills. What American History is taught has been given a new slant along with factual revisionism. Americans are not world leaders who live in freedom, granted by a masterfully crafted Constitution that invokes a Creator. It is an aggressor nation that oppresses its citizens and exploits the environment.

Graduates are not likely to favor capitalism over communism, because they view the former as exploitive, though they have no real grasp on the issues. Many of them voted for Socialist Bernie Sanders. They refer to politicians they don’t like as “Hitler,” lacking any understanding of the atrocities committed by the Nazi Third Reich.

It is with this backdrop that U. S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, was scheduled to give the commencement address at Bethune-Cookman University — a historically black university in Daytona Beach, Florida on Wednesday.

DeVos was greeted with loud boos and turned backs as she reached the lectern to deliver her commencement remarks. As she spoke, she was booed, shouted at, and met with calls of “Go home!” from students and audience members. Minutes into her speech, the president of BCU, Edison Jackson, stopped her to address the disruptive students. Jackson said degrees would be mailed to students if their behavior continued. “Choose which way you want to go,” he said.

DeVos began again, but the toothless warning went unheeded as the boos increased.  She addressed some of the opposition to her speaking at the black university, asking for those critical of her to hear her out, voicing the Trump administration’s support for black colleges and universities. “We support you and we will continue to support you,” she said.

Business Insider reports that the weeks leading up to her speech were marked by vocal opposition by students, civil rights organizations, and Florida education groups, who claimed DeVos has no understanding of the history and significance of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs)

Parents often go into debt to provide the college education they believe to be the key to their children’s successful futures. But instead of being educated, they are being indoctrinated and propagandized by mostly leftwing unionist instructors. This is where their National Education Association (NEA*) dues go. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT*) has the same agenda. American children spend more time each day with these agents of the left than they do their own parents.

On Tuesday, petitions carrying the names of over 8,000 students were delivered to university leaders urging them to “disinvite” DeVos from addressing the commencement ceremony.

Victimhood is a status graduating college seniors — of any background or ethnicity —-should ditch. It clashes with caps and gowns.

*H/T Center for Responsive Politics

Pres. Trump appointing Cindy McCain to key post?

We’ve all heard the old adage, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” If the reports are true, President Trump must be taking those words to heart.

What else could motivate him to consider appointing Anheuser-Busch beer heiress Cindy McCain to a State Department post? Under discussion is a broad-based position, perhaps ambassador-at-large, where she would focus on a specific issue, such as human trafficking.

The McCain’s discussed possible choices with President Trump during a dinner at the White House last month, according to an AP report.

A still petulant, failed presidential candidate, John McCain has done all he can to undermine Donald Trump since Trump won the GOP nomination. He withdrew his momentary support, and like his doppelgänger seat mate Jeff Flake, said he would not be voting for Trump.  McCain has actually referred to scandal-plagued Hillary Clinton as “a rock star.” Flake claimed Trump can’t win and shouldn‘t win.” The McCain’s and their fully-packed daughter, Meghan — now gifted with a morning slot on the Fox network —  have made no secret of their deep animosity toward Trump.

On Election Day, Cindy McCain sported a white pantsuit, a “code” used by those supporting Hillary Clinton —- even giving rise to a hashtag #WearWhiteToVote.

Just prior to Trump’s inauguration, an easy to imagine salivating John McCain passed what he knew to be unverified documents, reported as a “dossier” — all later determined to be bogus — to FBI director James Comey, alleging secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow along with allegations that Russian intelligence had personally compromising material on the then-president-elect.

No doubt about it — Cindy McCain, addicted to prescription opioids in the mid-1990s, stealing them from her own charity and misleading investigators about the facts — would be the ideal person to put in charge of trafficking — human or otherwise.

President Trump needs to rethink this plan.  It’s akin to bringing famished foxes into the hen house.

Clemson Univ. teaches expecting promptness is racist

Cultural divide expands even further; now extends to the clock

Diversity training scores another goose egg. Craig Bannister writing for cnsnews exposes the latest leftward lunacy coming out of what was previously referred to as higher education.

Clemson University’s “diversity education and training” instructs the university’s employees that every “cultural perspective regarding time” is equally valid, so it’s wrong to expect people to be prompt.

The university is spending nearly $27,000 on this program for its faculty members and the school’s President James P. Clements has pledged that ‘all employees will participate in the diversity plan in order to create a more inclusive environment on campus.

As an example, in one slide presentation, employees are taught that tardiness is acceptable because the concept of time is culturally relative. Thus, every culture’s perception of the actual time must be respected — since one “cultural perspective regarding time is neither more nor less valid than any other.”

Got that?  Chronic lateness  is no longer rude or disqualifying, but needs to be respected.

The presentation gives the example of “Alejandro,” who called a 9:00 a.m. meeting, and instructs that he should not rebuke a group of foreign professors and students who show up late: “Time may be considered precise or fluid depending on the culture.” The slide tutors that Alejandro shouldn’t impose his definition of time on others since doing so is not only disrespectful, but racist.

Bannister’s source is Campus Reform.

This past week SRAZ posted “Skewed news & rethinking the desirability of a college education,” describing a professor at Fresno State University who took to twitter to opine, “To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and the higher, the better.” It melds with the Clemson madness. Our once revered institutions of higher learning have become liberal propaganda machines, dispensing outrageousness and putting the finishing touches on the 12 previous years of brainwashing by members of the leftwing teacher’s unions. Open Secrets reveals the donations made by the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), two of the largest lobbying groups in the country.

The deception grows as Clemson’s President James P. Clements sums his views up with these words on the university’s website: 

“It is important, as an institution of higher learning, to celebrate our diversity and help others see the importance of creating an environment of inclusive excellence.”

We should be celebrating unity — which strengthens, rather than separates us. That’s what America has represented to generations of legal immigrants who gratefully assimilated into Americans, making our heritage their own as they transitioned to speaking English,  embraced our traditions and honored the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. It was known as Americanization.

In a paean to diversity, the inmates with multiple degrees are now overseeing an increasingly Balkanized asylum. President Clements’ annual base salary is $801,330.  No doubt he’s worth every cent.

Mail-in ballots should be a choice not a mandate

Ease of voting lessens safeguards and ballot integrity

Do you like the feeling of dropping your ballot in a secure ballot box at your polling place?  Many of us do. We can almost hear “God Bless America” playing in our heads as push the ballot through the slot.

That long-standing tradition will become as passé as glove compartment maps and White Out in Maricopa County as soon as next year if the newly elected Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes has his way. Fontes has announced his intention to mandate mail-in ballots in time for the 2018 statewide elections — eliminating polling places, poll workers and security.

Democrat Fontes, who won the office by 1 percentage point, describes the issue as a cost and time saving mechanism. Others view the grand scheme differently, expressing concerns about ballot security, including ballot harvesting, and coercion. There is also the real problem of non-citizen participation in our elections.

The guarantee of secure elections is a fundamental expectation of each and every voting citizen. We should accept nothing less

March 2016, Seeing Red AZ posted How secure is your mail-in ballot? It included several links that expose the very real crimes associate with voter fraud — including ballot harvesting.

Last November, just days before the presidential election, the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated Arizona’s ban on “ballot harvesting.” Read more in SCOTUS blog. Previously, the County Recorders and Secretary of State refused to stop the fraudulent practice.

How much easier and more open to fraud could voting be?  Fontes indicates that any voter who is eligible to vote in local elections — though they’ve never previously requested or received a mail-in ballot need not do anything to participate. All registered voters will automatically receive a ballot. Voters can register online. 

Fontes is quoted as saying, “The old system, (it) is time, in my mind, to move to the side,” I don’t know anybody that uses a horse and buggy today either.”

Fortunately Fontes is not the sole determiner of how the election system plays out. The state legislature will need to amend state law and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has the responsibility to authorize such a major shakeup of our elections. Then there are those pesky voters who prefer to cast their ballot in person, and have reason to distrust a system that lacks oversight.

Following the retirement of longtime Elections Director Karen Osborne, Fontes is conducting a nationwide search for a replacement, rather than promoting from within the office that functions in tandem with the Recorder’s Office.

AP reconfigures language, tries to control thinking — again

In a Friday email to subscribers listing updated entries for its style manual, the Associated Press is urging journalists to avoid making references in news stories that suggest there are only two sexes in the human race. Ken Shepherd reporting for the Washington Times caught this latest attempt to neutralize not only our identities and our language, but also dilute our ability to reason.

Gender is the latest gambit.

The Stylebook issued further guidance for use of pronouns under an entry named “they, them, their.” Those third-person plural pronouns are preferred by some transgender or gender fluid individuals who say they are not comfortable with traditional male or female personal pronouns, Shepherd notes.

“Gender fluid”?

At this point the Stylebook has drawn the line on the use of exotic pronouns: “We do not use other gender-neutral pronouns such as xe or ze.”

Yet.

In April 2013 the news agency asserted that “change is a part of AP Style because the English language is constantly evolving and enriched by new words, phrases and uses.” That announcement dealt with the terminology describing those who have illegally invaded our country, in order to “use the most precise and accurate words so that the meaning is clear to any reader anywhere.” In fact, by skewing words and their definitions, AP did exactly the opposite of their pretentious claim. Seeing Red AZ likened Associated Press’ leftward lurching language machinations to George Orwell’s “1984” Newspeak, the language used by Winston Smith as he toiled at his job rewriting history.

Seeing Red AZ reported in Dec. 2010 that the Diversity Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists called on news reporters nationwide to stop using the term “illegal immigrant” in their news coverage.

The Washington Times editorially addressed this attempt at language control by correctly stating altering words “doesn’t change facts.” The Times contended the term “illegal alien” is “highly specific and accurately describes the problem, unlike “undocumented immigrant,” which purposefully removes a stigma that should rightly remain.”

Kudos to the Washington Times, a lone rational voice in the reporting wilderness, for placing truth above political correctness.

Noonan is proof: A mind is a terrible thing to lose

Remember when Peggy Noonan was a readable conservative columnist? Her credentials as a speechwriter and special assistant to President Ronald Reagan gave the pert redhead panache beyond her ability to turn a phrase.

Now that she’s closing in on 70, she’s doing a 180° on what Winston Churchill is credited with describing as the natural order of youth and adult reasoning. The saying which still gets quite a workout is: “If you’re not a liberal at twenty, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.” Noonan has turned the adage on its ear.

HotAir carries a copy of Noonan’s most recent column, “Reach Across the Aisle, Mr. President,” which illustrates her downward spiral.

Would Noonan suggest President Trump go with hat in hand to plead with Chuck Schumer to stop degrading Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch as “extreme“? Yes. This Chuck Schumer. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is another Democrat he might try to reason with…if she possessed the mental capacity.

Disoriented Peggy Noonan has unmistakably tumbled down the political rabbit hole. Read her column, sure, but you’ll never read her mind. It’s obviously taken too many twists and turns to be decipherable. After turning on George W. Bush in 2008, she endorsed Barack Obama later that year. Noonan sold her integrity for a bowl of pottage. It can never be regained.

Statehood Day: At 105, Arizona’s an eyewitness to fake news

Today is Statehood Day. Arizona officially became a state on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 1912.  The newspaper that brought news to the state’s citizens debuted May 19, 1890, over two decades before Arizona moved from territory status to an official state with Gov. George W. P. Hunt at the helm. Readers who disdain the current leftward slant of the Arizona Republic will be surprised to know that its original masthead was the Arizona Republican. Even after the name was changed to the current Arizona Republic, its publisher and newspaper magnate Eugene Pulliam and his wife Nina, held fast to the conservative tone that characterized the content.

After their deaths, the Pulliam’s vast publishing holding Central Newspapers; Inc. was acquired by Gannett, Inc. and the downhill slide began in earnest. When the daily endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, it heralded the predictable move as being “extraordinary,” writing “never in its long history has the newspaper endorsed a Democrat — for president” (emphasis ours). It certainly has endorsed many Democrats for public office along with promoting reliably liberal issues.  In fact, the Arizona Republic endorsed Democrat Lyndon Johnson over Arizona native Barry Goldwater by omission as reported in the Washington Post.

Admitting Hillary was substandard, the editorial board engaged in overt understatement writing: 

“Make no mistake: Hillary Clinton has flaws. She has made serious missteps.”

Clinton lost as she should have, a fact the editorial board,  reporters, columnists, and the not-so-funny cartoonist at the Arizona Republic can’t seem to wrap their heads around. As they mourn their loss, the content is skewed even further left and President Donald Trump has become the newspaper’s punching bag.

A month before the Nov. 8, presidential election, Dan Nowicki, McCain and Flake’s assigned sycophantic reporter wrote an embarrassing piece titled, “3 reasons why Trump is in trouble in Arizona.” The editorial masquerading as a news report, included these words:

“Despite six trips to the state as a presidential candidate — Trump on Tuesday attracted an estimated 20,000 people to a rally in conservative Prescott Valley —  the celebrity billionaire has not been able to seal  the deal in the state.”

Actually Trump won Arizona handily, capturing all 11 electoral votes.

The markets have responded favorably to Donald Trump. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq each hit new all-time highs Monday. The S&P 500 has climbed five days in a row and is up 8.8% since President Trump won the November election. Treasury note yields have also been on an upward trend since Trump assumed office.

Having a businessman rather than a career-long political hack in the White House has obvious benefits. Of course, you’d never know that by reading the Arizona Republic.