Monthly Archives: March 2016

Some Observations About Yesterday’s Election

Posted on by

Yesterday a number of states held primary elections. Political junkies were watching carefully for clues to the future. I have chosen three articles that I think best explain where we are. The first article was posted by Andrew Malcolm at Investor’s Business Daily. The second article was posted at The Hill. The third article is from The Federalist. Before I continue, I would like to add one caution–this is the silly season. Most of what you are going to hear in the next two weeks is not true. Be very careful what you believe.

Investor’s Business Daily points out:

The bottom line — or one of them — is that not much has changed. No one new dropped out, which helps Trump by keeping his opposition divided heading into the big Fox News debate in Detroit Thursday evening.

What we do know for sure now is that the GOP is split by deep fissures heading into peak primary season. Rubio and Cruz think the other should drop out.

Kasich, who’s been getting in the 4%-5% range, called on the others to quit and declared: “We have absolutely exceeded expectations.”

The governor is holding on to very little except the prayer that lightning will give him a victory back home in Ohio on March 15 and, who knows, maybe some VP consideration from Trump as a reward for denying Cruz and Rubio enough votes to catch the billionaire.

Trump had a good night, although he under-performed his polling heading into the biggest voting day of this cycle so far. That and Rubio’s late surge to second in Virginia could be a sign the Florida senator’s mocking attacks are having some impact.

Rubio declared Tuesday evening: “Donald Trump will never be the nominee of the Republican Party. We are not going to turn over the party of Lincoln and Reagan to a con man.” He called Trump “a creature of the media, the same media that’s going to tear him to shreds if he ever becomes our nominee.”

Does anyone remember Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment?

The article from The Hill points out that the precinct that includes Liberty University did not follow the lead of Jerry Falwell Jr., the school’s president, and vote for Donald Trump. The total’s from that precinct are as follows: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) took first with 44 percent support in Liberty’s precinct and 513 votes, followed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at 33 percent, Ben Carson at 14 percent and Trump at 8 percent.

The article at The Federalist made a number of observations. The first observation is that Trump underperformed:

He lost Texas to Cruz, as expected. But he lost it bigly — some 17 points. He also lost Oklahoma to Cruz. And then Cruz went ahead and won Alaska to boot. Minnesota went for Marco Rubio, his first state victory. Trump also underperformed in other states, such as Virginia. The Real Clear Politics average of polls headed into the contest was near 15 points. He won by 2.8% over Rubio. That meant Trump got 17 delegates to Rubio’s 16. His wins in Vermont and Arkansas were by similarly small margins.

The difference between the Republican and Democratic voter turnout is dramatic:

These Tuesday contests continued a pattern of record-breaking turnout for Republican primary voters and decreased turnout for Democratic voters (Colorado saw more Democratic voters than they had in 2008). Only Vermont didn’t have record-breaking turnout for its Republican primary, and it was still way up over the last contest. Many of the states whose contests were held on Super Tuesday hold open primaries, which means traditionally Democratic voters could be crossing over to vote for Trump or another candidate. No matter the cause, the excitement of both Trump voters and those seeking to stop him is palpable and contributing to the voter turnout.

One wonders if this is Democrats crossing over because they feel Trump cannot beat Hillary Clinton or if it is enthusiastic Trump supporters. At this point I have no idea.

The article at The Federalist also states:

And while Cruz has previously shown much strength, many of the upcoming primaries are in states with demographics more like Minnesota than Texas or Oklahoma. Cruz and Rubio have shown strength in states with closed primaries, where Democrats can’t switch over to vote for Trump.

Trump is dominating and on path to the nomination. No one else has a good path, except if they all keep fighting to keep Trump from getting the delegates he needs. Expect much more discussion about whether people need to get out or stay in.

The question for those who would like to see a Republican president elected in November is simple, “Will the Democrats who are voting for Trump in the primary elections vote for him in November?” I honestly do not know the answer to that question, but I suggest that the people running the Republican presidential campaigns find that answer quickly.

 

 

Early Voting In North Carolina

Posted on by

Early voting in North Carolina begins this Thursday. I suspect that most voters have already made up their minds about the Presidential race, but there are some other offices on the ballot that are important. One of the often overlooked races on the ballot is the race for North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction. Currently that position is held by June Atkinson. There are five people running for that position, including Ms. Atkinson and Henry Pankey in the Democratic primary; and Mark Johnson, J. Wesley Sills, and Dr. Rosemary Stein in the Republican primary.

Superintendent Atkinson is a strong supporter of the Common Core standards. Henry Pankey’s website does not give a clear indication of whether he supports Common Core or not. Mark Johnson does not support Common Core, and J. Wesley Sills’ website is vague on the issue. Dr. Rosemary Stein is a strong opponent of Common Core.

The position of Superintendent of Public Instruction is important because it sets the tone for education in North Carolina. While the office does not totally control education in the state, the decisions made there impact all students across the state. Because I have seen the results of the decisions made by the current Superintendent (in the form of helping one of my granddaughters with her math homework), I am supporting a change. I am voting for Dr. Rosemary Stein for North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction.

In January of this year, Lady Liberty posted an interview she did with Dr. Stein. I am sharing a portion of that article below:

Finally we come to Dr. Rosemary Stein. Stein, who is a medical doctor and a Republican, has a pediatrics practice in Alamance county. Stein is the only other female in the contests and she’s also of Hispanic decent. Stein is a member of the Board of Trustee for Alamance Community College as well as Chair of curriculum there, is the Chair of the NC Republican National Hispanic assembly and is on the Board of the North Carolina Smart Start Foundation. Of note, she is also on the NC Superintendent’s Graduation Task Force.

…I sat down with Dr. Stein and talked to her about why she decided to run and what her biggest priorities are. When asked what the biggest factor that drove her decision to run for Superindent, Stein said that a small article in her local paper sent she and her husband on an investigative journey.

My husband and I started a pediatric clinic 16 years ago. Our clinic provides the best possible care to our patients regardless of the parents’ circumstance in life. Several years ago, we read the Sunday paper in which a list of the top 100 students in the area was printed. Not a single one of our patients was on that list.” said Stein. “This lead us to begin the process of determining why our kids were not succeeding in school.”

During our investigation of this problem, we realized that our children were not able to read at grade level, and in some cases not at all. To solve this problem and not misdiagnose ADD, we began to investigate better methods of teaching reading and math. It was clear that North Carolina was no longer using traditional phonics based reading methods and classical mathematics instruction.”

Today, our children are forced to learn using a curriculum based on Common Core. This method of instruction is developmentally inappropriate.” stated Stein. “It does not teach to the child’s brain development. In fact, because Common Core teaches things to the child at the wrong developmental period of their brain development, it is actually harming their brain development.”

This path is the primary factor in my decision to run for Superintendent of Public Instruction. It is my intention to return North Carolina to the Classical Education model that was used so successfully in America decades ago. It is proven to be developmentally correct for the brain development of the child.”

The different candidates all seem to have some topics that overlap in their platforms. Common Core seems to be a hot button, as is over-testing. I asked Dr. Stein what her top three issues or goals were and she began by telling me what wasn’t on the list.

“I am not running for Superintendent to be a better administrator of a failing education system.” Stein said. “I am running to change that system to Classical Education so that all North Carolina children can reap the benefits of an education system that is reserved only for the elite in our society. Only by doing this can we fix our education system.”

It is my goal to fix the English as a Second Language program and return it to an immersion program that was used when I was a Spanish speaking child.”

Stein addressed a critical, yet oft ignored, issue for the success of our schools – teacher preparation.

Stein stated, “I will also work with the North Carolina University system to return Child Development courses to the curriculum for aspiring teachers. Teachers must understand child development in order to understand how and why certain techniques work to help them teach their pupils.”

On the topic of the educational course that the Department of Public Instruction has taken, as well as the noted waste and administrative bloat under Dr. Atkinson’s tenure, Stein responded that waste can’t be reformed and that state and local control needs to be restored.

We cannot reform the waste in DPI.” stated Stein. “We must change the way that our children are taught. By accomplishing this task, the reasons for the waste will be eliminated.”

According to many North Carolina legislators, we receive about 10% of our education funding from the federal government. In return for this, we receive nearly 100% of the rules and regulations from them.” said Stein. “I would like to cut the ties to these federal funds and allow North Carolina children to get the instruction from those local educators who know them the best.”

Dr. Stein’s qualifications are impressive. She is a former teacher of Reading and English as a Second Language. She is an Adjunct Teaching Professor for three medical schools. She is a former Alamance County Community College Trustee, Chair of the Curriculum Committee. Those a just a few of her qualifications.

For further information on the reasons this lady should be our next North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction, please visit Dr. Stein’s website. If you care about the education of North Carolina’s children, please vote for Dr. Stein.

It’s Hard To Connect The Dots When Someone Keeps Erasing The Dots

Posted on by

On February 5th, The Hill posted an article by Philip Haney, who worked at the Department of Homeland Security for fifteen years. Mr. Haney begins his article reminding us of the unsuccessful attack on the underwear bomber in December 2009.

The article reports:

Following the attempted attack, President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to “connect the dots.” He said, “this was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material—the actual intelligence we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.

After leaving my 15 year career at DHS, I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of America’s counter-terror strategy, our leaders’ willingness to compromise the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness—and, consequently, our vulnerability to devastating, mass-casualty attack.

The article explains that shortly before the December 2009 attack, Mr. Haney was asked to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database. There was a scrubbing of potential Muslim terrorists from the database in the name of political correctness. (I believe that this was the result of the Muslim Brotherhood‘s infiltration of our government at some of the highest levels. For further information, see Center for Security Policy’s series on the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the American government.) There was also a ban on entering new data.

The article further reports:

A few weeks later, in my office at the Port of Atlanta, the television hummed with the inevitable Congressional hearings that follow any terrorist attack. While members of Congress grilled Obama administration officials, demanding why their subordinates were still failing to understand the intelligence they had gathered, I was being forced to delete and scrub the records. And I was well aware that, as a result, it was going to be vastly more difficult to “connect the dots” in the future—especially beforean attack occurs.

As the number of successful and attempted Islamic terrorist attacks on America increased, the type of information that the Obama administration ordered removed from travel and national security databases was the kind of information that, if properly assessed, could have prevented subsequent domestic Islamist attacks like the ones committed by Faisal Shahzad (May 2010), Detroit “honor killing” perpetrator Rahim A. Alfetlawi (2011); Amine El Khalifi, who plotted to blow up the U.S. Capitol (2012); Dzhokhar or Tamerlan Tsarnaev who conducted the Boston Marathon bombing (2013); Oklahoma beheading suspect Alton Nolen (2014); or Muhammed Yusuf Abdulazeez, who opened fire on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee (2015).  

It is unimportant whether the problem is in the White House or the State Department–what is important is that the policy needs to change quickly. I have personally met two former CIA agents who had formerly briefed our military and State Departments who have now been blocked from briefing because they told the truth about Islamic terrorism. If our nation is to survive, we need to be aware and knowledgeable about the threats we face. Sticking our heads in the sand and erasing the evidence will result in American deaths.