By Mike Huckabee
February 18, 2019
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If you wonder why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might seem like a mental giant to the majority of her constituents, consider the kind of “education” many of them likely received. Here’s a look from one disgusted veteran language teacher (she has a PhD in French Literature) at the corruption within the New York City public school system that “pretends to educate” students. She offers an incredible inside story of her experiences teaching in several schools within the district, some rougher than others but all failing to educate.
To cover up their own incompetence, writer Mary Hudson says, authorities blame poverty, “racism,” lack of funding (!) and even the teachers when it’s really the fraudulent system that fails the students. Nothing is demanded of these kids (there's the real racism); they are not expected to pay attention, learn anything or even behave decently. They don’t even seem to know why they’re in school; to them, it’s just to socialize and, often, to terrorize. The teacher has absolutely no power in the classroom, and the kids know it. “Why do precious few adults admit the truth out loud?” she asks. “Because in America the taboo against questioning the current orthodoxy on race is too strong and the price is too high. What is failing our most vulnerable populations is the lack of political will to acknowledge and solve the real problems.”
We hear a lot about toxic masculinity these days; this teacher’s observation relative to that issue is that “the girls could be meaner than the boys. The latter did not engage at all. They simply ignored me.”
Another perplexing question: “Why should millions of perfectly normal adolescents, not all of them ghettoized, resist being educated?” She says, “The reason is that they know deep down that due to the color of their skin, less is expected of them. This they deeply resent. How could they not resent being seen as less capable? It makes perfect psychological sense. Being very young, however, they cannot articulate their resentment, or understand the reasons for it, especially since the adults in charge hide the truth. So they take out their rage on the only ones they can: themselves and their teachers.”
Surely to be dismissed as racist –- by leftist politicians and, sadly, by many educators –- this essay is just the opposite: recognizing the potential in these students but seeing how “the soft bigotry of low expectations” (to quote President George W. Bush) is destroying it.
It’s hard to understand how any teacher can put up with the horrendous abuse described in this essay and continue for years, surely knowing at some point that his or her efforts to educate, influence or inspire anyone in this kind of classroom are almost certainly in vain. Apparently, some of the educators themselves (especially the younger ones) are so PC in their own viewpoint that they don’t try to change even the most self-defeating student culture. Somehow, that would be wrong.
This situation isn’t new. Dr. Hudson’s initiation into teaching in NYC, at Washington Irving High School, was a shocker, and it happened right after the start of the school year in 2001. She says she had a few days’ “honeymoon’ period, during which the students “weren’t particularly engaged” but at least were respectful. But when, on September 11, news was brought to her classroom that airplanes had blasted into the Twin Towers and that one of them had already fallen, the students erupted into applause, whooping and high-fives, with “some getting out of their seats to do a sort of victory dance.”
Her experience seems to have gone downhill from there.
When, in 2010, Dr. Hudson had finally had enough --- one too many students threatened to hurt her, in this case “cut her” --- she realized she was fighting a losing battle to educate them even a little and just broke. She had to quit. She says that when one fellow teacher expressed astonishment that she would “abandon” her students, she asked her colleague, “What does it matter? They didn’t learn anything, anyway. The school will hand out passing grades no matter what I did.”
Well, Dr. Hudson may not have been able to make much of a difference for the students in her classroom, but perhaps she is making a difference now, by letting us know the state of education in a corrupt and chronically failing urban district. Sunshine is the best disinfectant; if anything at all will help, it is this.
https://quillette.com/2019/02/10/public-educations-dirty-secret/
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Happy Presidents Day! And yes, it’s a day that honors everyone who has ever held the office, so suck it up, Never Trumpers.
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Our prayers today are with the victims of a shooting Friday at the Henry Platt manufacturing company in Aurora, Illinois, and their families. It left five victims dead and five police officers in stable condition. The shooter had worked for the company for 15 years and was being terminated that day when he pulled out a gun and began firing.
Once again, this appears to be a case where multiple gun laws that could have prevented the deaths were broken or not enforced. The shooter obtained the gun despite having a prior felony assault conviction in Mississippi that should have blocked him from obtaining a gun, as well as six more recent arrests in Illinois. The shooting, like virtually every other mass shooting, also took place in a designated “gun-free zone.” Nevertheless, I’m sure it will be argued that the solution to preventing future such attacks will lie in passing more laws.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/02/16/illinois-shooting-occurred-in-gun-free-zone/
Meanwhile, a Huck’s Hero salute to all the first responders who risked their lives to stop the shooter, and to this local restaurant for stepping up to help.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/nearby-business-goes-beyond-first-responders-deadly-shooting/
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Deepest condolences and prayers today for the family of pollster Pat Caddell, who died Saturday at 68 after suffering a stroke. Caddell first came to notice as a Democratic pollster who helped Jimmy Carter get elected, but in recent years, he’d become a Fox News contributor and advised some Trump supporters.
Caddell was also a guest on my TBN TV show. He was a good man, a throwback to the time when people put facts and the good of America over the good of their party, and when people of differing political views showed respect for each other and engaged in actual debates to find solutions and common ground. Sadly, there seems to be little place for that in politics these days, but Pat Caddell set an excellent example for anyone who would like to return to a more sane and respectful style of politics.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ap-patrick-caddell-pollster-to-jimmy-carter-dies-at-68/
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When the alleged attack in Chicago on gay, black actor Jussie Smollett of the TV show “Empire” was first reported, I strongly condemned such attacks, as did President Trump. I pointed out that there were some questionable details of his account, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Even as the media used the story to batter Trump and his supporters for creating this “atmosphere” of hate, violence and bigotry, I held my tongue and pen. I even kept quiet as each new detail that emerged made Smollett’s story seem ever more fantastic:
Two racist Trump supporters just happened to be in an upscale neighborhood of one of the most liberal cities in America, a place that one skeptical resident described as being “half black and half gay,” yelling "This is MAGA country"…they just happened to be wondering around at 2 a.m. on one of the coldest nights in history…they just happened to recognize an obscure actor from a TV show with an almost entirely black audience…they just happened to know enough about him to know he is gay and has been rabidly anti-Trump for years before Trump even ran for President…they just happened to be carrying a bottle of bleach and a rope…they just happened to attack him in one of the few places anywhere around that had no surveillance cameras…Smollett just happened to be able to fight them off in less than a minute without dropping his Subway sandwich…and he just happened to still be wearing the rope around his neck when the cops came to talk to him. That’s a lot of unlikely stuff to have “just happened.”
Well, it now seems safe to report that it likely didn’t just happen, it was carefully planned…and not by the “attackers.” Although (disclaimer!) this has yet to be officially confirmed, media source say the police tracked down two brothers from Nigeria, one of whom worked as an extra on “Empire,” and both of whom are also strongly anti-Trump. It’s suspected that they rehearsed and staged the attack, and that they were paid $3500 before leaving for Nigeria right after the attack and were promised $500 more on their return. The sources say Smollett paid for the rope, which came from a Chicago area hardware store. Police found ropes, bleach, masks and a red hat in their apartment. They are reportedly cooperating with police, who want to re-interview Smollett.
For his part, Smollett denies he orchestrated a fake attack and says he’s “angered and devastated” by the claims. He’s hired the same attorney who defended Michael Cohen, and his lawyer says he’s been victimized a second time by this story. But if he did file a hoax report, and wasted the time and manpower of the police in a city with a huge caseload of real murders to deal with, he could face a stiff fine and up to three years in jail.
Since he’s still denying it, I won’t pass judgement on whether his highly unlikely story is actually true or false until the police issue their findings. I only wish that same standard had been upheld by our esteemed media, political and show business figures, who have spent the past two weeks trumpeting this story as absolute proof that Trump supporters are violent, racist thugs and this shows us “what’s wrong with America in 2019.”
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/big-names-outraged-jussie-smollett-attack-facts-came/
Well, they’re sort of right about that last part. It’s the same thing that was wrong when self-righteous liberals used social media and mass media to falsely attack a group of innocent Catholic school kids as violent bigots with zero evidence, just because they happened to be wearing MAGA caps. That fell apart just a couple of weeks ago, and the leftist Twitter mobs obviously learned absolutely nothing from it.
(Well, Sen. Cory Booker is now “withholding judgment,” which would have been more impressive if he’d done it when this story first surfaced.)’
Before the Smollett attack has even been officially ruled a hoax, some on the left are already deleting their angry tweets about violent, racist Trump supporters, while others are trying to blame it somehow on Trump (he “created the climate” where racist lynchings are possible, even if they didn’t really happen) or scolding Republicans for “gloating” by pointing out the holes in the story and the hysterical credulousness of the left. I’m sure there will be few if any apologies for their rush to judgement.
All of this is a smokescreen to avoid dealing with what’s really wrong in America in 2019 – actually, since 2016. Absolutely convinced that they are right about everything and that they have some divine claim on the Presidency, those on the left were devastated when the voters said otherwise.
A wise and mature party would have looked at this unexpected rejection as a signal to reflect on why so many people thought their policies don’t work and why their candidate was so unliked that people were willing to take a chance on a wild card like Trump. Instead, they lashed out with blind rage at the voters for not giving them the power they crave like a heroin fix.
For two years, they’ve blamed everything for their loss except themselves. They’re torn the nation apart trying to tar Trump voters as what Hillary dismissively called them: racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic deplorables. In fact, worse than that: white supremacists! No, even worse: Nazis! When you have that attitude, it’s easy to fall for lies that fit your preconceived notions, no matter how implausible they may be.
All this to avoid taking a long look in the mirror and asking, “What did I do wrong?”
I lived through a time when America really was torn by racism and violent attacks on black people by white supremacists, and there was no need to create hoaxes. I have no wish to return to that ugly time. Liberals are fond of accusing others of wanting to “turn back the clock to the days of Jim Crow, the KKK and segregation.” No Republican I know wants to go back to the era of those racist Democrat creations. I wish today’s liberals would quit trying to revive the concept of politically-inspired violence, both for real and as political theater to slander their opponents.
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Politics 101: Never introduce a radical new concept that you don’t want your opponents to use against you. For instance, if you’re going to declare some places to be “sanctuary counties” for criminal illegal immigrants where immigration laws don’t apply, don’t be surprised when a more conservative county comes up with the idea of declaring itself to be a “Second Amendment sanctuary” where gun control laws don’t apply against people protecting themselves from criminals.
The only problem is that it should be unnecessary because the entire USA is already a “Second Amendment sanctuary.” That’s why the right to keep and bear arms is in the Second Amendment.
So if someone who is new to politics inadvertently violates an obscure ethics rule, will it be brushed under the rug and forgiven as an unintentional faux pas, or will there be loud demands for endless investigations, federal charges and impeachment? Here, I’ll answer that for you: we’re talking about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, not anyone connected to President Trump.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/aoc-ethics-dilemma-boyfriend-staff-roster/
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Some who are challenging President Trump’s power to use an emergency declaration to shift funds and build a wall are citing law Prof. Jonathan Turley’s winning argument against Obama having the power to order the Treasury to pay health insurance companies under Obamacare. But this is a very different situation, one that Trump is likely to win. That’s not my layman’s opinion, that’s according to…law Professor Jonathan Turley.
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The whole “Green New Deal”/“Democratic” socialism/free-everything-for-everybody fad personified by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who has become famous for the same reason as Nigerian email scams: promising free stuff on the Internet) has many Democrats rushing to jump on the bandwagon. But while they are following their Party’s lemming-like charge off the leftward cliff, some Democrats are sounding alarms and trying to bring those drunk on socialist false promises back to their senses.
One is Steven Rattner, a former Obama adviser-turned-New York Times writer. Friday, he tweeted that AOC’s celebration of driving away Amazon and its 25,000 new jobs from New York was the “most economically ignorant” statement he’d ever read. He followed it up with a New York Times op-ed called “Your Grandchildren Are Already in Debt,” reminding those who are pushing “free” health care, college, income and other goodies that we’re already in more debt than all the wealth of the “super rich” can cover, and contrary to their beliefs, piling on more debt does matter – in fact, it can have catastrophic consequences.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/fmr-obama-lead-advisor-says-aoc-economically-ignorant/
It’s amazing that anyone should have to tell people who hold Congressional office such basic facts about economics. But then, it’s even more amazing that in the space of just two years, the Democratic Party has charged so far to the left, embracing insane ideas that have proven to be formulas for disaster for over a century. As Gard Gindler puts in a piece at American Thinker, “It seems that in January 2019, someone pressed a switch and turned off the brains of the Democrats.” His advice for President Trump: take a cue from Napoleon and when your opponents are self-destructing, stand back and let them.
It’s tempting, but more is at stake than party advantage. If people who still have command of their faculties don’t keep speaking up to point out the cruel absurdities of far-left dogma, then enough people might start to believe it to elect even more of these people into government. I want Americans to realize that socialism and all its false promises are a dangerous dead end simply by studying history and thinking logically. I don’t want Americans to have to learn the hard way, like Venezuelans did. So I will continue to point out the insanity of the left’s arguments in hopes of saving them from themselves.
And for those who think I should shut up and let them self-destruct, even if it means taking America with them, I say: Don’t worry, there is zero chance they’ll come to their senses and listen to me.
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You know you’re getting old if you can remember a time when even Democrats observed the unspoken rule that you don’t go abroad and badmouth America on foreign soil. I know Joe Biden is old enough to remember that time, but he obviously doesn’t remember that rule.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/02/the-feeling-is-mutual-joe.php
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Painful lesson for Hollywood, if they care: A blogger on capitalism developed a new way to compare box office receipts for movies, by ranking them as a percentage of US GDP, which accounts for inflation, population growth and other factors. When all that is put on a level playing field, the top three biggest money-makers of all time are, in order, “Gone With The Wind,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” and “Star Wars.”
He also notes that thanks to producer Kathleen Kennedy filling the recent “Star Wars” sequels with feminist and social justice warrior political messages, the value of the franchise has dropped by 95%, costing Disney shareholders $3.7 billion.
If you want to read the full story and check his math, here’s the link (warning: some rude language and images here):
https://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-kathleen-kennedy-and-politics-cost.html
And just for fun, a reader intrigued by his formula used it to rank the real top-grossing 1001 movies of all time:
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