Monthly Archives: February 2020

My friend introduced me to this quote from Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine wrote Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.

Just a short time ago, the social buzzword was politically correct. An arrogant demonstration of government control by telling us what to say, not to say or the correct way in which to say or do something. Well, if Pelosis action during the State of the Union address was an illustration of political correctness, then I want nothing to do with it. If I want to watch kids in a sandbox, Ill go to our local playground.

Now that the president has been acquitted of the Articles of Impeachment, he will clean house and rightfully so. People will say he is being vindictive. Perhaps he should be, considering the attacks on him and his family since his inauguration. Im glad that he is our president because he has the fortitude to take the action that is necessary to clean up this mess in Washington D.C.

Put aside any hatred you may have towards our president and open your eyes to what is happening in Washington, D.C. before its too late. Join me in promoting the Convention of States as granted to us by Article V of the United States Constitution. Help the President clean up Washington, D.C. Join the movement by going to http://www.conventionofstate.com and sign the petition.

Clair Moyer,

Lewisburg

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I was blind but now I see | Opinion | dailyitem.com - Sunbury Daily Item

The alternative right is undeniably damaging and toxic to American politics. Anytime intolerance presents itself in a culture it creates a fear and disturbs the constructive political conversation that is otherwise likely held. Unfortunately, because the alt-right makes use of the word right, many people group this small sect of people with actual Republicans and conservatives. That is not the case. The definition of the alt-right doesnt fall close to what a Republican is or stands for.

The term alternative-right, or alt-right, was coined by Richard Spencer by his webzine in 2010. Spencer is a well known white supremacist who used his platform to advocate for an America free of minorities.

The Southern Poverty Law Center defined the alt-right as:

"A set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that 'white identity' is under attack by multicultural forces using 'political correctness' and 'social justice' to undermine white people and 'their' civilization."

Alternative right stands to give hateful and racist people a means to organize. They believe in small government and limiting taxes, but that is where the similarities with the actual right end. Thats why they use the word alternative; they cant be a part of the real right.

In his farewell address to America, Senator John McCain discussed the issues that the alt-right and racist extremist groups pose to our country:

We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been, he wrote.

The majority of Republicans despise and denounce the alt-right. They dont have real political ideologies or opinions. Theyre just racist populists who pretend that they care about political issues other than race to try and legitimize themselves.

Aligning the alt-right with the actual right not only hurts the right, but it legitimizes white supremacy. It is up to not only Republicans, but every ideology of the political spectrum to denounce the alt-right as not a part of the Republican party.

Mikayla Rochelle is a junior studying strategic communication at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those ofThe Post. What are your thoughts? Tell Mikayla by tweeting her at @mikayla_roch.

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So Listen: The alt-right is not the right - The Post

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

President Donald Trump

From the moment Trump declared his candidacy for president, many people have been offended by his violation of norms. However, what is a norm? The best if yet incomplete definition of a norm is a standard practice or behavior not officially codified in rules. Norms are just that expectations without official coercive mechanisms except rebuke from peers and punishment by voters. But when voters are polarized along party lines instead of specific issues, tribal affiliation is highly indicative of voters political positions. Accordingly, checking norms violations devolves into extreme partisan warfare.

One central element to todays political tribalism is identity politics, or the formation of political alliances based on specific characteristics. More extreme examples are I will only support non-white men on the left or no immigrants from Muslim countries on the right. One stems from the desire to include people historically left on the political periphery and another from a fear of insecurity. I am not drawing moral equivalency, but merely pointing out our non-compromise political environment.

This non-compromise political environment has allowed Trump to violate norms once followed by previous presidents with little repercussion (yet). Trump has violated campaign norms such as not disclosing his tax returns, rejecting divestment from his business interests, lying with a pathology unseen in modern American political history, and openly appealing to nativism. He has also wrought fury upon institutionalized norms such as not politicizing the Justice Department or questioning the NATO alliance. The media has been labeled enemy of the people, although he is hardly the only president to have conflicts with journalists (see Obama circa 2015).

These norms bely the cracks they covered. The first crack is the growth of presidential power, which allows for significant unilateral executive action. All Trump did was implicitly admit its good to be king with his chauvinistic bravado. Second, congressional checks on presidential power are now hostages of the political environment more so than most living people can remember. This is possible because of the third crack. The political environment is hyper-partisan and rewards Trump for his I have big hands swagger. Trump laid the cracks before his opposition to see, and neither impeachment nor daily condemnation has worked. Doubt that? See his approval ratings.

Isaac Russell

It also tells us what should and should not be a norm needs to be revisited. Should the president legally be required to disclose tax returns or divest business interests? How do you punish the president for asking a foreign power to investigate a political opponent when Congress manifests the tribalism of the electorate that has been perpetuated by political parties? Well, better win the House and the Senate, because politicians face their parties base in primaries, not yours.

Lastly, it tells us even Americans outside of Trumps base are more nationalistic than people care to admit. Trump may have violated a norm by asking Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden, but its tough to get people to care about a country most couldnt find on a map. Much of the rights tribalism is driven by nationalism and disdain for the lefts political correctness. Many voters know Trump isnt perfect and some revel in his decimation of established norms. They value American interests defined materially and to differing extents ethnically, which gives Trump great leverage when the economy is doing well. This is not merely a political knife. It is a political broadsword, and those who want norms to prevail had better find a broadsword of their own.

Isaac Russellis a Humphrey School of Public Affairs Masters of Public Policy student and a legislative assistant in the Minnesota Senate.

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On presidential norms and the coming political knife fight - MinnPost

I believe God had a lot to do with putting Donald Trump in the White House and by doing so, has exposed how vicious, vile, corrupted, broken and dysfunctional the Washington establishment has become.

They say no one is above the law, but they dont practice what they preach. When a political party will do whatever they want in order to achieve their agenda, no matter how many people and their families they destroy, that is way beyond dirty politics and policy differences.

What we have witnessed in the last several years should be a wakeup call for every freedom-loving American. It is so sad that all this is happening in a nation whose government was founded on the truth, values and guidelines of Gods word, the Bible. We have turned away from the Bible and turned to mans logic, reason and so-called wisdom and ideas. The flaw with that is mankind is the problem. Genesis 3, the fall of man, explains that very well.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Chronicles 7:14

We dont need any more political correctness and Hollywood drama and emotional fluff. We need revival, and return to the word of God and the guidelines he has given us.

By the way, Donald Trump doesnt walk on water; neither does anyone else. The question is how many of us know the one who did walk on water. God have mercy on us.

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Government needs to get back to beliefs of Founding Fathers - Grand Island Independent

By World Tribune- A former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official, who had said that one or more terror attacks in the U.S. could have been prevented if not for the Obama administrations prioritizing political correctness over safety, was found dead Friday from a gunshot wound, reports say.

Philip Haney, as a whistleblower, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2016 that DHS ordered him to delete hundreds of files of people with ties to Islamist terrorist groups, arguing terrorist attacks against people in the United States could have been prevented if certain files had not been scrubbed, the Washington Examiner noted in a Feb. 22 report.

It is very plausible that one or more of the subsequent terror attacks on the homeland could have been prevented if more subject matter experts in the Department of Homeland Security had been allowed to do our jobs back in late 2009, Haney wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill in February 2016.

It is demoralizing and infuriating that today, those elusive dots are even harder to find, and harder to connect, than they were during the winter of 2009.

The Amador County Sheriffs office said that deputies and detectives responded to reports Friday morning at 10:12 a.m. of a male subject with a gunshot wound on the ground in the area of Highway 124 and Highway 16 in Plymouth, California.

Upon their arrival, they located and identified 66-year-old Philip Haney, who was deceased and appeared to have suffered a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound. A firearm was located next to Haney and his vehicle. This investigation is active and ongoing. No further details will be released at this time, the sheriffs office said in a statement.

Red State and Heavy reported that Haney had been missing since Wednesday, and that the gunshot wound was found in his chest.

Several reports cited friends of Haney as saying they found it difficult to believe that Haney had taken his own life.

The Examiner, citing sources close to Haney as saying he was recently in contact with top officials about returning to work for the DHS. Additionally, Haney was engaged to be married.

Speaking anonymously for fear of retribution, a friend whos known Haney for 40 years told CCN.com: Knowing his strong Christian faith, his dogged pursuit of truth and his love for America, and his upcoming marriage, it seems highly unlikely that he committed suicide. He was on a mission to wake up America, and I strongly doubt he took his own life.

In a 2016 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Haney explained that on two occasions his carefully prepared files had been purged. He also believed that, if the Obama administration had maintained this database, several mass shootings, including the December 2015 Orlando, Florida nightclub massacre and the June 2016 San Bernardino, California mass shooting could have been prevented.

In an interview with then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly, Haney said that about a year into an investigation that had led his team to one of the mosques that San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook had attended, officials from the State Department and the Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties showed up at his office to pull the plug.

In his 2016 article for The Hill, Haney claimed President Barack Obama had thrown the U.S. intelligence community under the bus for failing to connect the dots after a Nigerian Muslim terror suspect was linked to a failed terror plot on Christmas Day in 2009.

Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused, Haney wrote, referring to Obama. 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.

Haney also called out the Obama administration for prioritizing political correctness over safety.

I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of Americas 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 Washington Examiner received a text message from Haney on Nov. 11 which mentioned plans to write a sequel to his first book, See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Governments Submission to Jihad, which described his experience at DHS.

Odd (surreal reality) that I was a highly visible whistleblower that virtually no one listened to, while this guy remains invisible, but is treated like an anointed oracle from above, Haney said in the Nov. 11 text, referring to alleged Ukraine whistleblower Eric Ciaramella. However, my story is still live, i.e., theres still more to come. Itll be called National Security Meltdown.

Haney added, I have a severely hyper-organized archive of everything thats happened since See Something, Say Nothing (SSSN) was published in May of 2016. The National Security Meltdown sequel will pick up right where SSSN left off. My intention is to have it ready by early-to mid-Spring of 2020 (just before the political sound wave hits), then ride that wave all the way to the Nov. elections.

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Obama administration whistleblower reportedly kills self The Tribune Papers- Breaking News & Top Local Stories - Thetribunepapers

Im on the phone with the cult film director, actor, and godfather of camp John Waters as hes preparing his annual Christmas party for about 200 people. Hes been keeping busy,just finishing up the last show of his holiday tour (a yearly ritual of his), and this time aroundhe visited 16 cities. As he puts it, Im like a drag queen on Halloween.

Nobody does it quite like Waters. With a career bridging the divide between high and lowbrow culture, this is the man whose stringof trashy '70sexploitation comedieselevatedDivine to the world,who directedthe original 1988version of the musical Hairspray,and who still finds time to starin everything from Seed of Chucky to Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. Carrying a sign that read "I'm not psycho,"he once hitchhikedacross the United States from his native Baltimore to San Francisco, and wrote about his experiences inhis bookCarsick.He also maintains a regular column on Artforumwhere he rounds uphis favorite movies each year with his eclectic taste.

The last time Waters was in Minnesota, he curated the show Absentee Landlord at the Walker Art Center in 2011. The exhibit envisioned the Walkers galleries as rental apartments, where he housed 80 pieces of art in different rooms, organizing the roommates in a way that putthem in conversation with each other to reveal new sides to each work.

Notdirecting at the moment, the man with the pencil-thin mustache continues to perform his freewheeling one-man show,This Filthy World,while updating it to reflect the times. Its always rewritten and completely new. Im always rewriting it, he says. In a wayIve been doing this for 50 yearsits a self-help in a way, at the same time telling you how to negotiate your way and fail upwards. But its everything: Its about crime, fashion, movies, young people, music... How you really should just stay in the city you were born in now. You dont have to move to New York or L.A. anymore, you should just make those cities better.

Ahead of his two sold-out performances at the Parkway Theater, I caught up with the inimitable man once ordainedby the beatnik author William S. Burroughs as thePope of Trash.

On his childhood in Baltimore, My childhood was like a pretty upper-middle class family, very functional. They were horrified by what I did, but at the same time they were supportive. Ive written about them a lot in all the books. The best thing I can think of is my father after he saw A Dirty Shame, and he said, It was funny, but I dont know if Ill ever see it again.

On the effectCatholicism had on his upbringing, I always make the joke that, being raised Catholic, sex will always be dirty. It made me angry, thats what it did right in the beginning. My mom would tell me the first thing I rebelled was when we had to stand up in church and take the pledge of the Legion of Decency, which condemned movies, and I refused to take it. I was about seven years old. It made me angry. It still makes me angry.

On his parents' acceptance, I never came out as gay, its not like a bar mitzvah. They were afraid to ask me if I was gay because they thought it might be something worse. [laughs] They were confused because they figured I was gay, except I had straight male friends and I hung around with girls too. There were so many mixed signals they didnt quite know what it was, but whatever it was, I think smoking pot and LSD made them more nervous. They had so many things to be nervous about, but they still tried to accept that they did the best they could, and they made me feel safe, and thats the only thing that really counts, whatever your parents say. Your parents could be serial killers and be good parents if they make you feel safe."

On political correctness in comedy, Weirdly, I am politically correct, even though the stuff I say, you would probably argue with me. No one ever gets mad at what I say, because I think I make fun of myself first. I dont think Im mean-spiritedwell, I am about Trumpand I also kind of make a lot of jokes about the Democratic candidates, too. I think Im an equal opportunity employer, but I only make fun of things (mostly) that I love. I think thats why I lasted so long, because being mean is funny for 10 minutes, not 70. Also, Im 73 years old, and if youre still that angry at 73, youre kind of an asshole. I mean, you shouldve worked something out by the time youre 73. [laughs] I mean, theres lots to get angry about politically, but if youre blaming everybody for different things in your life at 70you know, life isnt fair, and everybody is not dealt the same hand, so you have to accept that. You can blame your parents up to 30.

On his morning routine, I wake up Monday to Friday at 6 a.m., read six newspapers, look at my emails, and then turn it all off. At 8 a.m. I write until about 11:30 every day. And then in the afternoon, Im in my office, and we sell whatever it is Im thinking about.

On the 2020 presidential election, Im hoping for this scenario: That the election is so close that [Trump] loses by one vote, which will make him go so insane that he will refuse to leave the White House, and then tanks will have to come in to remove our own president from the White House. That would be a good movie. With Melania? It would be a really exciting action movie.

On what hes been reading, I really like Lydia Davis, her essays I just read are really, really smart. I just read Ducks, Newburyport, and its one sentence and its 987 pages long. Its quite good though: Its a page-turner, but the problem is theres no place to put the bookmark.

On his most controversial opinion, That Greta Thunberg is really a Children of the Corn. Im really for her, but Im scared of her now. When Trump criticized her, she answered back, I know you are, but what am I? She makes Republicans so crazy that it makes me laugh. We need some fearless people to straighten us back out here.

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John Waters on This Filthy World - Mpls.St.Paul Magazine