Former Agent: Secret Service Lowered Standards In Pursuit Of Diversity

Sensing this would be a sensitive topic, Bongino addresses his apprehension of discussing the subject in the book. He writes he hesitated to include this information in his book “because whenever someone mentions the term ‘diversity’ and discusses the real-world implications of applying such a loosely defined term to a specific job description, he or she runs the severe risk of character assassination by extreme partisan actors who don’t care a bit about the real-world ramifications of their ideological crusades.”

The Daily Caller  "The lowering of standards has been ongoing since at least “the early 2000s,” according to the book.

“ 'Sadly, and for many years, the Secret Service has been sacrificing mission-readiness at the altar of political correctness,” Bongino writes in “Protecting The President: An Inside Account of the Troubled Secret Service in an Era of Evolving Threats,” out Tuesday.

"Bongino worked for the Secret Service from 1999 to 2011. He has since run for the U.S. Senate, and twice for the U.S. House. He was an instructor at a training academy from 2002 until 2006, when he became part of the U.S. Presidential Protection Division.

“ 'The Secret Service’s attachment to quota-based hiring was so intense that they hired applicants for the special agent and Uniformed Division officer positions that could barely meet basic physical fitness standards upon their commission as agents or officers,” the book contends.

"Bongino’s insider account cites recent security breaches at the White House as the fault of the agency’s hiring practices." . . .

Calif. Lady Moves to Red State, Suddenly Sends Unexpected Message to Lib Friends Back Home

Liberal obsession with diversity often shuns true multiculturalism — a variety of opinions, thoughts and political stances — and instead focuses on the “feel good” categorization of irrelevant traits like skin color.

Benjamin Arie   "Flyover country. Bible belt. Middle America. Coastal elites in liberal cities have all sorts of terms for “red states,” but they all seem to convey one message: Conservative areas of the country are somehow backward and should be avoided. 

"That’s the impression one California writer had about America’s heartland. Leah Singer never imagined that she would end up in Trump Country… but when she moved to Indiana not long ago, her entire perception changed. 9/20/2017 Calif. Lady Moves to Red State, Suddenly Sends Unexpected Message to Lib Friends Back Home  

"In an editorial piece published last weekend in the Indianapolis Star, the author sent a clear message to liberal friends back in California and throughout the country: You might be wrong about “red states.” 

“ 'I used to say I’d never move to a red state. And then I did. And it’s changed my life for the better,” Singer admitted. 

"As a “California girl,” the writer explained that the le-leaning west coast sees itself as a bastion of “diversity,” but Singer hinted that it was less of a paradise for anybody who didn’t parrot the liberal talking points. “I was raised in California, where we like to believe diversity is applauded and opportunities abound,” she explained.

 “ 'In many ways, California’s blue state bubble can be a very safe place to live if you subscribe to the popular liberal politics.”

" In other words, it was diverse only if you thought and talked the same as everyone else, which kind of defeats the point. Regardless, Singer was a bit apprehensive about starting her new life in a conservative region. " . . .
Hat tip to Jeff Hayden; Plano, TX

California Gov. Brown says Trump supporters “resemble troglodytes”

Legal Insurrection

Meanwhile, Brown continues his Climate Change Crusade and is poised to sign the Sanctuary State bill

 

"California’s glitterati are plumbing new depths in their hatred of President Donald Trump.

"This weekend, Hollywood elites spent 3-hours deriding Trump and his supporters during the Emmys. Then, the state’s leading, elite politician decided to weigh in with an insulting description of myself and a good portion of the state’s tax-paying population.

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) ripped President Trump for his recent remarks on North Korea and compared Trump’s supporters to “people who dwell in deep, dark caves.”

Speaking at a climate change event in New York City, Brown criticized Trump for his weekend tweet aimed at North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“Everything he’s doing is … stupid and dangerous and silly. I mean, come on, really, calling the North Korean dictator ‘Rocket Man’?” Brown said, according to Politico. “He is accelerating the reversal through his own absurdity.”

Brown also mocked supporters of Trump, saying they most resemble “troglodyte[s].”

“You should check out the derivation of ‘Trump-ite’ and ‘troglodyte,’ because they both refer to people who dwell in deep, dark caves,” Brown said.

"Brown is continuing to lead the “Cultural Civil War” in his role of “Commander-in-Chief” of California. He is trying to inspire other politicos to join him on his climate change crusade, with the level of sobriety and decorum we have come to expect from “Governor Moonbeam”." . . .

cartoon added by TD

From Political Insider: California Governor Jerry Brown Compares Trump Supporters to ‘People Who Live In Caves’   . . . "Brown, who earned the nickname Governor Moonbeam, has lashed out against Trump supporters with growing frequency. He recently claimed taxpayers who didn’t want to see tax hikes in California are “freeloaders.' ” . . .

James Woods Nails CNN With Three Story Headlines About Wiretapping Trump Team. Fake news or what?

Weasel Zippers

Trump draws APPLAUSE at the UN for blasting Iran's 'murderous regime' and warning that Tehran's mullahs are still working on nuclear missiles

UK Daily Mail   "Donald Trump unleashed broadside after broadside against Iran on Tuesday at the United Nations, warning that the 'rogue state' is still racing toward the completion of a nuclear weapon that would destabilize the entire Middle East.

" 'Major portions of the world are in conflict, and some in fact are going to hell,' he said, in a speech to the General Assembly that included direct attacks on Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba.

"The Obama administration entered into an agreement with Tehran and five other world powers in 2016, which it said would prevent Iran's rise as a nuclear military power."

Where did they go? Seats allocated to North Korea were empty

during the speech. One junior diplomatic aide stayed behind to hear 

Trump but sat elsewhere.

. . . "He also attacked Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Syria.

"But his stinging condemnation of North Korea hung heaviest in the air as Kim Jong-Un's authoritarian government continues a path toward building a nuclear missile.

"Tho[s]e ambitions have already led to two rounds of economic sanctions via the UN Security Council.

"Trump also blasted Kim for running a country beset where poverty and torture are the norm.

" 'No one has shown more contempt for other nations and for the well-being of their own people than the depraved regime in North Korea,' he said.

" 'It is responsible for the starvation deaths of millions of North Koreans. And for the imprisonment, torture, killing and oppression of countless more.' "

 Read more 

Barack Obama Raking in Six-Figures for Wall Street Speeches

CDN  "Former President Barack Obama is following the lead for another Democrat – Bill Clinton – as he looks to cash in big time now that he has served out his second term.

"Barry talked big back when he was running for office, especially after the great Wall Street-triggered recession that led to the 2008 bailout and the favoritism of his administration to the high-rollers over ordinary Americans who were wiped out by bad bets by gamblers.

"Not one of the banksters who were responsible for crashing the economy ended up being punished by Obama’s Justice Department which was headed by one of the most jackleg crooked fixers of the modern era in Attorney General Eric Holder.

"Holder eventually left office and returned to his old job as a highly paid lawyer for the big banks and now Obama is reaping the rewards for services rendered by giving six-figure speeches to firms engaged in money-changing. It’s a perfect example of the golden revolving door between Washington and Wall Street that whirls non-stop as corrupt politicians rush to get paid by their true constituents." . . .

Blowing Up One Of North Korea’s Missiles Suddenly Not Sounding So Crazy

Jazz Shaw

. . . "Therein lies the rub. If we do shoot down one of Kim’s ICBMs it’s an impressive show of force and a reminder that he probably couldn’t hit us anyway. The attack would be futile and followed by his annihilation in a bloody and catastrophic but probably fairly short war. But if we miss we’ve got egg on our faces and Kim has the bragging rights to continue his nuclear program full speed ahead.

"It’s a tough call."

And Antifa will riot in support of the fat dictator just as the left cheered for Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War.

The Idiot Caucus Has Now Declared War On Cotton

The Hayride

"One of the more difficult things to stomach in this new age of the Social Justice Snowflake Warrior is the perpetual search for new things to be outraged and unhinged about, and the constant pell-mell retreat by normal human beings in the face of the outraged and unhinged. We bring you a pair of incidents showing the extremes the social justice crowd is finding in their attempts to destroy civil society – with the new front being, believe it or not, cotton stalks used as decorations in white people’s houses.

"First, to Lipscomb University in Tennessee…

" 'Got that? The president of the university invited a bunch of students to his home, and his wife has set up a centerpiece at the dining room table made up of cotton stalks – which has been a Southern decorative thing forever – and this is a celebration of slavery. Or something. So naturally there would be a row over such a centerpiece when black students come out to the house." . . . Read more.

How do you solve a problem like Hollywood?

Cartoons added by TD

Patricia McCarthy  "You ignore it.  Aside from the D.C. establishment of both parties, there are no people who revere themselves more than the core of the wealthiest and most privileged members of the film and television industry. 

"The Emmy awards program was an outsized testament to their self-love and to their contempt for all those who do not live by their mindless devotion to the ideology of the anti-American left.  They all believe they are unique, special and gifted.  Some of them are talented but talent does not always come with brains or a moral compass.  Those who graced the stage at the Emmys were the worst of the worst:  Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Alec Baldwin, Kate McKinnon, etc.  It is a long list of arrogant, elitist snobs who have ruined the television and film industries with their politicization of entertainment and endless self-aggrandizement. 

"The program was a three-hour roast of Donald Trump, which made him the actual star of the show.   The jokes were not amusing.  They were vile.  These people demeaned themselves as did the cheering audience.  Had one person said just one such thing about Obama when he was in office, this bunch would still be talking about how offended they were.  They live by very different rules than what they attempt to impose on the rest of us." . . .

And THIS: Total disrespect for the 63 million who voted for President Trump.

. . . "Let me suggest to Clinton that she should sit down and watch the Emmys of 2017.  The explanation for her defeat can be found in that show and so many of the people who came on stage to make fools of themselves." . . .

Diversity Can Spell Trouble

History’s other positive example is the United States, which has proven one of the only truly diverse societies in history to remain fairly stable and unified—at least so far. Although the Founders are now caricatured as oppressive European white men, they were not tribal brutes. 

Victor Davis Hanson  "America is experiencing a diversity and inclusion conundrum—which, in historical terms, has not necessarily been a good thing. Communities are tearing themselves apart over the statues of long-dead Confederate generals. Controversy rages over which slogan—“Black Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter”—is truly racist. Antifa street thugs clash with white supremacists in a major American city. Americans argue over whether the USC equine mascot “Traveler” is racist, given the resemblance of the horse’s name to Robert E. Lee’s mount “Traveller.” Amid all this turmoil, we forget that diversity was always considered a liability in the history of nations—not an asset.

"Ancient Greece’s numerous enemies eventually overran the 1,500 city-states because the Greeks were never able to sublimate their parochial, tribal, and ethnic differences to unify under a common Hellenism. The Balkans were always a lethal powder keg due to the region’s vastly different religions and ethnicities where East and West traditionally collided—from Roman and Byzantine times through the Ottoman imperial period to the bloody twentieth century. Such diversity often caused destructive conflicts of ethnic and religious hatred. Europe for centuries did not celebrate the religiously diverse mosaic of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians, but instead tore itself apart in a half-millennium of killing and warring that continued into the late twentieth century in places like Northern Ireland.

"In multiracial, multiethnic, and multi-religious societies—such as contemporary India or the Middle East—violence is the rule in the absence of unity. " . . .

If America’s set of values becomes a pick-and-choose potpourri, there is no unity. And then America will certainly become yet another one of history’s casualties of diversity.

Getting Rid of La Raza

By Mike Gonzalez* at The American Interest

The government should not be in the business of funding ethnic factions, which only reinforce the power of the elites.

Aztlan La Raza

. . . "No less a liberal lion than U.S. Representative Henry Gonzalez of Texas took to the floor of the House on April 22, 1969, to decry the Ford Foundation’s creation of “a very grave problem” in his district. “I cannot accept the belief that racism in reverse is the answer for racism and discrimination,” he said. It is worth quoting Gonzalez at some length, as the dysfunctions he identified remained a fixture of the group:

As deeply as I must respect the intentions of the foundation, I must at the same time say that where it aimed to produce unity, it has so far created disunity. The Ford Foundation believed that the greatest need of this particular minority group [Mexican Americans] was to have some kind of effective national organization…. This good desire may have rested on a false assumption; namely that such a disparate group could, any more than our black brothers or our white ‘Anglo’ brothers, be brought under one large tent.

"La Raza was “invented for the purpose of receiving the grant,” said Gonzalez, and in its first year of existence had “not given any assistance that I know of to bring anybody together,” existing only to “promote the rather odd and I might say generally unaccepted and unpopular views of its directors.”

"And that’s just it. Political scientist Peter Skerry describes groups such as La Raza as participants in a game called “elite network politics.” Even though these networks have “weak community ties,” the groups involved win policy brawls by participating in “a process of specialization and professionalization by which politics become more and more an insiders’ game…a politics increasingly turned in upon itself and insulated from the surrounding social flux.”

"In La Raza’s case, that meant a turnstile relationship with the Obama Administration that the president himself boasted about." . . .

*Pointedly added.

American Silliness: Schools named after Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin targeted for renaming in Dallas

Rick Moran

What's happening should become known as the Second Salem Witch Trials.  Those who stand accused are unable to defend themselves.

 . . . "Mr. Marshall must have flunked history.  He forgot to mention something germane to the current debate; Benjamin Franklin founded the very first anti-slavery society in America.  But he is white and hung around with slavers, so he's got to go.

"What is most disturbing to me about this mad dash to bury American history is that there is no effort whatsoever to bring any kind of balanced analysis to the examination of a historical figure's fitness to be honored with a statue or school name. 

"Human beings are not one-dimensional.  Being human, they have flaws – many of them serious.  Why don't we apply the same scrutiny we are applying to the Founding Fathers to a man like Ted Kennedy, who may not have owned slaves, but treated women as property, not to mention dozens, perhaps hundreds of cases of pushing himself on women that today might be considered sexual assault?  Whatever good he did as a legislator must be seen in balance with his faults."