The CIA has launched a taskforce to assess the impact of 250,000 leaked US diplomatic cables. Its name? WikiLeaks Task Force, or WTF for short.That isn't TheOnion - but TheGuardian. Hard to tell the difference sometimes ... but looks ligit.
Nearly one-fourth of the students who try to join the U.S. Army fail its entrance exam, painting a grim picture of an education system that produces graduates who can't answer basic math, science and reading questions, according to a new study released Tuesday.All my kids are in private schools for a reason. This is no shock.
The report by The Education Trust bolsters a growing worry among military and education leaders that the pool of young people qualified for military service will grow too small.
"Too many of our high school students are not graduating ready to begin college or a career - and many are not eligible to serve in our armed forces," U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told the AP. "I am deeply troubled by the national security burden created by America's underperforming education system."
The study shows wide disparities in scores among white and minority students, similar to racial gaps on other standardized tests. Nearly 40 percent of black students and 30 percent of Hispanics don't pass, compared with 16 percent of whites. The average score for blacks is 38 and for Hispanics is 44, compared to whites' average score of 55.There you go. You can't get there from here without doing one of two things - or both of them; you can lower standards, or discriminate against whites (and some asian groups (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), as other standard testing systems have those asians scoring higher than whites). That is just math.
Even those passing muster on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB, usually aren't getting scores high enough to snag the best jobs.
It's official: Here are the states gaining and losing seats (and thus electoral votes) in 2011. I've put states entirely controlled by Republicans in bold and states entirely controlled by Democrats in italics, although in some of these states there are backstops against total partisan redistricting -- Arizona, for example, has a nonpartisan panel. The gainers:
Arizona +1
Florida +2
Georgia +1
Nevada +1
South Carolina +1
Texas +4
Utah +1
Washington +1
The losers:
Illinois -1
Iowa -1
Louisiana -1
Massachusetts -1
Michigan -1
Missouri -1
New Jersey -1
New York -2
Ohio -2
Pennsylvania -1
This is about as bad as it could get for Democrats, and as good as it could get for Republicans. The next GOP presidential candidate gets six free electoral votes from South Carolina, Texas, Utah. The Democratic caucus in the House is about to see internal warfare in the rust belt and northeast, as their members are forced into Thunderdome battle for the diminished number of seats. Only in Illinois, I think, will the Democrats be able to create a map that hurts the GOP's newly elected members and takes back a seat or two.People in a free society vote with their feet. What we all know instinctly we can see in the census data.People are voting with their feet. Not from bad to good weather, but from high tax to low tax. California vs. Texas is a perfect example. Not just taxes, but business climate as well.
“These numbers are an opportunity for Republicans, but also a challenge, since the main areas undergoing population growth are (with a few exceptions like Utah) growing mainly through a growing Latino population. Which explains why Democrats are so eager to try to divide off Latino voters to vote as a homogenous race-conscious bloc the way African-Americans do; it’s their only path to offset their shrinking deep-blue-state power base. There’s no future in being the party of the Northeast and the West Coast, and Democrats know this; liberal pundits and left-wing bloggers are quite open about the extent to which they bank on racial demographics as their salvation, and those demographics only benefit them if they can maintain very high rates of racial division in the voting patterns of Latino and African-American voters, far higher than you would find among white voters. Republicans don’t have to win the Latino vote outright to fend off that challenge, they only need individual Latinos to remain open enough to both sides that Republicans can persuade a decent percentage to vote GOP, as the Democrats still do among white voters. Frankly, it’s not a coincidence that the two states with the most population growth have had, for the past decade and a half, GOP governors starting with George W. and Jeb Bush who worked hard to cater to Latino voters and declined to join in the harshest anti-immigration (even anti-illegal-immigration) rhetoric or policies.Does that mean that if you believe that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin that you are a Republican? Does that mean that you think one should vote based on the judgment of upper brain functions and not the tribal instincts from the most primitive parts of our DNA - that you are a Republican?
“Let’s look deeper at the map through the eyes of a Democrat, and you can see why the campaign of relentless racial division touted on a daily basis by left-leaning commentators and pursued by President Obama in some of his ugliest moments of the 2010 stretch run – calling Republicans the ‘enemies’ of Latinos who had to be ‘punished,’ asserting that Republicans were ‘counting on …black folks staying home’ – will only be exacerbated as Obama’s natural strategy for 2012, given how his performance in office has lost him much of the support among white voters (and some among Latino voters) that he enjoyed in 2008.”
Not only did the South and West win -- which liberals will dismiss as a function of weather -- but low tax states consistently beat high tax states. Not only did conservative states beat liberal states, most tellingly, the winners were almost to a man conservatively governed.Consider this striking fact unearthed by political strategist (and former Giuliani adviser) Ken Kurson, posted on Facebook:
Avg tax rate in states gaining a Congressional seat: 2.8%
Avg tax rate in states losing a Congressional seat: 6.05%
People vote with their feet.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, the master of subtle diplomatic messaging declared that on July 2011 the U.S. really will begin to leave the Afghan theater. “It will not be a token amount” of troops leaving, Mr. Biden said, adding that “We’re going to be totally of there come hell or high water by 2014.”Yes, a retreat under fire will be both hell and high water.
Germany has announced plans to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan more quickly than expected, with the pullout beginning next year and finishing by 2014.I don't blame them. We signaled our retreat with the President's West Point speech last year - and shifting to 2014 didn't change the fact that we have decided to accept ultimate defeat on our own choosing.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told the parliament Thursday that the pullout will begin about a year from now -- earlier than the 2012 date outlined in a 108-page progress report on Germany's mission in Afghanistan, issued earlier this week. Germany has been reviewing its Afghan plans at the same time that President Barack Obama has, and on Thursday the president announced details of his Afghan strategy review, citing slow progress but saying "we are on track to achieve our goals."
With those additional forces in Afghanistan, we are making considerable gains toward our military objectives. The additional military and civilian personnel that I ordered in Afghanistan are now in place, along with additional forces from our coalition, which has grown to 49 nations.No sir; all your usable and partially usable maneuver forces from allied nations are going home. With Germany leaving - the balance will follow them. They are following your lead in retreat on a timetable. Congratulate yourself - you just traded a good chance for some kind of victory for certain defeat.
From InsideDefense, the new Republicans selected for the House Armed Services Committee include (in alphabetical order):
