Will Hillary, Bill and Obama Be Forced To Take A Knee? Kim's " Intimidation Game" Right All Along. Affirmative Action Wrong All Along.

Before Uranium One and The Trump Dossier play out, Hillary, Bill and Obama may be forced to take a knee.

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Melanie Phillips is one of my favorite clear eyes Female Bulldogs. (See 1 below.)

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This is occurring prior to Trump's visit to the DMZ. (See 2 below)
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Almost a year ago, I reviewed Kim Strassel's book "Intimidation Game." What Kim wrote then is even more relevant now because we now know how correct she was, not that I ever doubted her.

If you remember, she came here for a book signing and told about 70 people at our home what was going on was unprecedented and a travesty of justice.. 
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I always thought affirmative action was another progressive idea that was wrong and have have negative long run consequences .  A friend of mine got me to accept it as a necessary start and I did but I always had my doubts. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)  As I see it: Real threat to the West: Why can’t Britain see it?

By MELANIE PHILLIPS

The Iranian regime must be defeated. It is shocking that, unlike President Trump, Britain is intent on appeasing it. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia has been making some remarkable comments.

In an interview with The Guardian, the recently designated heir to the Saudi throne said the desert kingdom had been “not normal” for the past 30 years. He blamed the extremist Wahhabi form of Islam, which succeAssive leaders “didn’t know how to deal with” and which had created a problem around the world.

“Now is the time to get rid of it,” he said. Saudi Arabia would now revert to “what we followed – a moderate Islam open to the world and all religions. Seventy percent of the Saudis are younger than 30. Honestly, we won’t waste 30 years of our life combating extremist thoughts. We will destroy them now and immediately.”

Open to all religions? Churches and synagogues in Saudi Arabia? An end to the Wahhabi extremism which has spawned jihadism across the globe? Can he be serious? 

We know the prince is a reformer. Aware that the oil weapon is fast disappearing as the price of crude falls, he wants to open up the economy. That means modernization.

Recently, Saudi women were given the right to drive. Religious police have been reined in and deprived of their powers of arrest. Small moves maybe, but anathema to the hard-line clerics.

Is it possible, though, to close Pandora’s jihadi box? Was Saudi Arabia ever religiously moderate? 

The prince says it became extreme only in response to the 1979 Iranian revolution. That is not quite true. The creed of Wahhabi Islam, which seeks to proselytize via the sword both non-Muslims and not-extreme-enough Muslims to its ferocious dogma, was imposed under the chieftain Muhammad al-Saud in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

After the Iranian revolution, an attempt was made to overthrow the House of Saud on the grounds that it had deviated from the true Wahhabi path. In a deal made with the clerics, the Saudi rulers not only hardened religious rules at home but poured money into spreading the jihad through mosques, madrasas and 
universities across the world.

The prince’s reformist agenda goes hand in hand with the kingdom’s tactical alliance with America in the common fight against Saudi Arabia’s arch enemy, Iran – in which it is cooperating below-the-radar with Israel, too.

To the British government, with its close economic ties with Saudi Arabia, these reformist noises come as a relief, since Saudi human rights abuses continue to cause it severe embarrassment.

Nevertheless, Britain is not on the same page as Saudi Arabia in trying to constrain Iran. Perversely, Britain remains intent upon a course of action that is instead empowering Iran by continuing to support the cynical and dangerous nuclear deal the UK helped US president Barack Obama broker in 2015.

President Donald Trump has now refused to certify Iran’s compliance with that deal, saying Iran has breached it several times by exceeding the limits it set on heavy water and centrifuge testing.

More remarkably, the deal’s own terms allow Iran to make a mockery of its fundamental purpose in constraining Iran’s nuclear weapons program, for the inspection procedure takes place only at sites where Iran has agreed to allow inspection. These exclude its military sites. The deal’s proponents can claim that a robust inspection is being applied, while Iran is able to evade inspection of the sites that really matter.

Recently the International Atomic Energy Authority stated it could not verify that Iran is “fully implementing the agreement” by not engaging in activities that would allow it to make a nuclear explosive device. When it came to inspections, said the IAEA, “our tools are limited.”

According to the Institute for Science and International Security, as of the last quarterly report released in August, the IAEA had not visited any military site in Iran since implementation of the deal.

In any event, the deal does not prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, because its “sunset clause” allows it to do so in 10 or 15 years’ time – and reports suggest it has the capacity to develop them extremely quickly.

Worse still, the deal allows Iran to develop ballistic missiles. Sanctions relief has enabled it to pour money into its proxy army Hezbollah, promote Hamas terrorism and spread its influence and terrorism into Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Yet the British government not only helped create but still implacably supports this terrible capitulation to Iranian power. Parting company with Trump, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the nuclear deal is “a crucial agreement that neutralized Iran’s nuclear threat” which has “undoubtedly made the world a safer place.”

What planet is he living on? Iran is marching toward regional hegemony. In Iraq, there are reports that its Quds Force has been coordinating with Iraqi government officials to recruit the most effective ISIS fighters and release them from Iraqi prisons. These fighters are being organized, trained, and equipped to attack US and other regional forces.

Despite all this, however, the threat that worries Britain most is not Iran, but the prospect of war against Iran. The fact that Iran has been waging war against the West since 1979, in the course of which it has repeatedly attacked Western targets, murdered countless civilians and been responsible for the deaths of many British and American soldiers in Iraq, is brushed aside.

Unless it really does reform itself, Saudi Arabia will continue to pose a threat from its religious extremism. Nevertheless, it is an ally against the greater enemy at this time: Iran.

The Iranian regime must be defeated. It is shocking that, unlike President Trump, Britain is intent on appeasing it.

The writer is a columnist for The Times (UK).
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2)EXCLUSIVE: US Preparing to Put Nuclear Bombers Back on 24-Hour Alert

By Marcus Weisgerber Read bio

If the order comes, the B-52s will return to a ready-to-fly posture not seen since the Cold War.

BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. — The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-armed bombers back on 24-hour ready alert, a status not seen since the Cold War ended in 1991.

That means the long-dormant concrete pads at the ends of this base’s 11,000-foot runway — dubbed the “Christmas tree” for their angular markings — could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment’s notice.

“This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said in an interview during his six-day tour of Barksdale and other U.S. Air Force bases that support the nuclear mission. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.”

Goldfein and other senior defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given, but that preparations were under way in anticipation that it might come. That decision would be made by Gen. John Hyten, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, or Gen. Lori Robinson, the head of U.S. Northern Command. STRATCOM is in charge of the military’s nuclear forces and NORTHCOM is in charge of defending North America.

Putting the B-52s back on alert is just one of many decisions facing the Air Force as the U.S. military responds to a changing geopolitical environment that includes North Korea’s rapidly advancing nuclear arsenal, President Trump’s confrontational approach to Pyongyang, and Russia’s increasingly potent and active armed forces.

Goldfein, who is the Air Force’s top officer and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is asking his force to think about new ways that nuclear weapons could be used for deterrence, or even combat.

“The world is a dangerous place and we’ve got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons,” he said. “It’s no longer a bipolar world where it’s just us and the Soviet Union. We’ve got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It’s never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right.”

During his trip across the country last week, Goldfein encouraged airmen to think beyond Cold War uses for ICBMs, bombers and nuclear cruise missiles.

“I’ve challenged…Air Force Global Strike Command to help lead the dialog, help with this discussion about ‘What does conventional conflict look like with a nuclear element?’ and ‘Do we respond as a global force if that were to occur?’ and ‘What are the options?’” he said. “How do we think about it — how do we think about deterrence in that environment?”

Asked if placing B-52s back on alert — as they were for decades — would help with deterrence, Goldfein said it’s hard to say.

“Really it depends on who, what kind of behavior are we talking about, and whether they’re paying attention to our readiness status,” he said.

Already, various improvements have been made to prepare Barksdale — home to the 2d Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the service’s nuclear forces — to return B-52s to an alert posture. Near the alert pads, an old concrete building — where B-52 crews during the Cold War would sleep, ready to run to their aircraft and take off at a moment’s notice — is being renovated.

Inside, beds are being installed for more than 100 crew members, more than enough room for the crews that would man bombers positioned on the nine alert pads outside. There’s a recreation room, with a pool table, TVs and a shuffleboard table. Large paintings of the patches for each squadron at Barksdale adorn the walls of a large stairway.

One painting — a symbol of the Cold War — depicts a silhouette of a B-52 with the words “Peace The Old Fashioned Way,” written underneath. At the bottom of the stairwell, there is a Strategic Air Command logo, yet another reminder of the Cold War days when American B-52s sat at the ready on the runway outside.

Those long-empty B-52 parking spaces will soon get visits by two nuclear command planes, the E-4B Nightwatch and E-6B Mercury, both which will occasionally sit alert there. During a nuclear war, the planes would become the flying command posts of the defense secretary and STRATCOM commander, respectively. If a strike order is given by the president, the planes would be used to transmit launch codes to bombers, ICBMs and submarines. At least one of the four nuclear-hardened E-4Bs — formally called the National Airborne Operations Center, but commonly known as the Doomsday Plane — is always on 24-hour alert.

Barksdale and other bases with nuclear bombers are preparing to build storage facilities for a new nuclear cruise missile that is under development. During his trip, Goldfein received updates on the preliminary work for a proposed replacement for the 400-plus Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the new long-range cruise missile.

“Our job is options,” Goldfein said. “We provide best military advice and options for the commander in chief and the secretary of defense. Should the STRATCOM commander require or the NORTHCOM commander require us to [be on] a higher state of readiness to defend the homeland, then we have to have a place to put those forces.”

·    Marcus Weisgerber is the global business editor for Defense One, where he writes about the intersection of business and national security. He has been covering defense and national security issues for more than a decade, previously as Pentagon correspondent for Defense News and chief editor of ... Full bio

“If you talk about it, it's a dream, if you envision it, it's possible, but if you schedule it, it's real.”

Anthony Robbins

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3) Let’s Agree: Racial Affirmative Action Failed

And college admissions offices should reveal the true secret sauce (not test scores) for getting in.

By John Katzman and Steve Cohen

We disagree in principle about affirmative action. One of us, a frequent fundraiser for Democratic candidates, believes that it’s better for colleges to have a diverse student body that more faithfully reflects the nation; and that we need to counterbalance the impact of poverty on education and opportunity, which often means giving special consideration to minority students. The other, a former Reagan staffer, believes consideration of race is intrinsically unfair and hinders race relations.

But we agree that race-based affirmative action hasn’t worked. Because of how it has played out in practical terms, it’s time for colleges to shift the policy from being based on race to income.

Affirmative action’s original intent was to incorporate more minority students, specifically blacks and Hispanics, into elite universities. But blacks and Hispanics have actually lost ground in the admissions race over the past 25 years, as recently reported by the New York Times . And while the original policy was intended to help minorities, Asian-American students feel they are taking the biggest hit. As a result, many have filed lawsuits against Ivy League schools such as Harvard, claiming that to gain admission, Asian-American students, on average, have to score 140 points higher on the SAT than white students, 270 points higher than Hispanic students, and 450 points higher than African-American students.

In tandem with shifting the basis for affirmative action, colleges need to be clearer about what qualifies students for admission. Many people believe that selective college admissions is, or should be, purely based on academic success. But the work of admissions officers is more complicated than finding the highest test scores. It’s more like casting a movie. They want to put together an incoming freshman class that has aspiring journalists for the school newspaper, great athletes for all the teams, debaters, musicians, actors, dancers, legacies, and development prospects.

Jack DeGioia, the president of Georgetown, told us that his school has to fill more than 140 separate “buckets,” reflecting the diversity of interests and backgrounds that will create a vibrant community. Of 19,500 Georgetown applicants last year, about half were academically qualified—that is, they scored over the threshold of test scores and grades to put them into the qualified pool to fill those buckets.

Standardized tests help admissions officers narrow their pools; they are still the most often used yardstick colleges have to compare applicants. But those tests are also very responsive to focused preparation. A new survey commissioned by Noodle found that Asian-American families spent more than twice as much money on test prep as any other group. This explains in part why Asian-American kids do so well on the exams. It’s not surprising that they are disappointed when their higher scores don’t result in admission to elite schools.

But the counterintuitive admissions secret—based on hundreds of interviews we’ve conducted with college admissions directors, deans and presidents over 25 years—is that an additional 10 or 20 points on the SAT above the (secret) threshold doesn’t improve one’s chances of getting in. That’s because admissions officers know that standardized tests are best at measuring how hard someone prepares for the test. They are less useful at predicting whether an applicant will be an academic star in college. Consequently, admissions officers place much more weight on the rigor of academic courses and teacher recommendations to help identify the most promising students.

The application essay is another tool for admissions officers, which they use to identify applicants who are generous, considerate and thoughtful—and to weed out those who obviously are not. Then they look for evidence of long-term commitments to extracurricular interests, volunteer activities and even after-school and summer jobs, to fill those buckets and leaven the college community.

One way schools could make admissions less “unfair” and a bit less stressful is to be more transparent about their scoring rubrics—the combination of GPA, SAT and course selection that get an applicant into the “possible” pile. Colleges could say: “To be a serious candidate for admission, you need a 3.2 GPA and 1200 SAT scores. Of course, if you are a potential All-American athlete, an all-state flutist, or have a family income under $35,000, we’ll probably make allowances. But importantly, once you’ve met that threshold, we really do not care if your grades or SAT scores are higher. At that stage, we’re looking for interesting, nice kids with a passion.”

In the 2003 pivotal decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that colleges should not need race-conscious decision policies in 25 years; that was 14 years ago.

Now is the time to make the switch from a “minority” bucket to a “grit” bucket—for applicants of any race who’ve risen above economic adversity—and to be transparent about this change. Whether on the left or right, fair people cannot begrudge a boost in the admissions process for a young person who overcomes poverty and inferior local schools.

Rather than continue to pretend that college admissions is one giant academic meritocracy, let’s be more candid about the complex and idiosyncratic needs of each school. Let’s explicitly reward students who have overcome disadvantaged financial beginnings, but not give one race an advantage over another. This is where we begin to create better outcomes and build a fairer, healthier system.

Mr. Katzman is CEO of Noodle and founder of the Princeton Review and 2U. Mr. Cohen is an attorney and a co-author of “Getting In! The Zinch Guide to College Admissions & Financial Aid in the Digital Age.”

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