Strategy Cartoon

School principal bans Santa, Thanksgiving and Pledge of Allegiance (In America?)

Principal Jaela Kim, of PS 169 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Santa Claus is banned. The Pledge of Allegiance is no longer recited. “Harvest festival” has replaced Thanksgiving, and “winter celebrations” substitute for Christmas parties.
New principal Eujin Jaela Kim has given PS 169 in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, a politically correct scrub-down, to the dismay of teachers and parents.
“We definitely can’t say Christmas, nothing with Christmas on it, nothing with Santa,” PTA President Mimi Ferrer said administrators told her. “No angels. We can’t even have a star because it can represent a religious system, like the Star of David.”
Kim, 33, did not return a call or e-mail seeking comment.
A memo last month from assistant principal Jose Chaparro suggested a “harvest festival instead of Thanksgiving or a winter celebration instead of a Christmas party.” He urged staff to “be sensitive of the diversity of our families. Not all children celebrate the same holidays.”
Ninety-five percent of the 1,600 kids at PS 169 are Asian or Hispanic. This is what happens when the the minority over-rule the majority.

Watchdog group reportedly calls for probe of Clinton relationship with firm tied to son-in-law

A conservative watchdog group will call for a federal investigation Monday into Hillary Clinton's actions toward a deep-sea mining company tied to her son-in-law, according to a published report.
According to Time magazine, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), plans to file a complaint with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics alleging that Clinton gave Neptune Minerals "special access to the State Department based upon the company’s relationships with Secretary Clinton’s family members and donors to the Clinton Foundation."
The complaint comes two weeks after emails released by the State Department show that Clinton, now the Democratic presidential front-runner, ordered a senior State Department official to look into the request from Marc Mezvinsky.
Mezvinsky, a partner in a New York hedge fund and the husband of Clinton's daughter Chelsea, had received an email in May 2012 from investor Harry Siklas asking if he could help set up contacts with Clinton or other State Department officials.
That August, Clinton relayed a copy of the investor's email to Mezvinsky to Thomas Nides, then a deputy secretary of state and now vice chairman at Morgan Stanley, a major New York financial services firm. "Could you have someone follow up on this request which was forwarded to me?" Clinton asked Nides. He replied: "I'll get on it."
At the time, Clinton was advocating for an Obama administration push to win Senate approval for a sweeping law of the sea treaty. The pact would have aided U.S. mining companies scouring for minerals in international waters, but the Republican-dominated Senate blocked it.
The emails do not show whether Clinton or other State Department officials met with Siklas or with Neptune executives. Federal ethics guidelines warn government employees to "not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual," but there are no specific provisions prohibiting officials from considering requests prompted by relatives.
In the email, Siklas also said that his then-employer, Goldman Sachs, was representing Neptune. Before joining Eaglevale, Mezvinsky had also worked for eight years at Goldman, partly during Siklas' tenure there between 2004 and 2007. Members of the influential New York firm were one of Clinton's top funders in her 2008 presidential race, giving more than $225,000 that cycle. The firm has also been a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, giving between $1 million and $5 million.
"We believe that requests like this from anyone other than Goldman Sachs and her son-in-law were not passed along," FACT Executive Director Matt Whitaker told Time, "so there was a preference given in her duty as Secretary of State in comparison to other requests."
Whitaker said the Office of Government Ethics could refer the matter to the Justice Department once it conducts an investigation into the emails.

Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton 'killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity'

Donald Trump claimed Sunday that Hillary Clinton "killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity" with her decisions as secretary of state, seemingly shocking his interviewer.

In a "Fox News Sunday" interview, Trump said Clinton and President Barack Obama's foreign-policy decisions in Africa and the Middle East resulted in the deaths of "hundreds of thousands" of people.

"She is the one that caused all this problem with her stupid policies. You look at what she did with Libya, what she did with Syria. Look at Egypt, what happened with Egypt, a total mess."

"She was truly — if not the — one of the worst secretaries of state in the history of the country," he added. "She talks about me being dangerous. She's killed hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity."

Wallace pushed Trump to clarify what he meant.

"The Middle East is a total disaster under her," Trump said.

Trump was responding to an interview this week in which Clinton said Trump's plan to temporarily ban most Muslims from traveling to the US was dangerous.

"He has gone way over the line. And what he’s saying now is not only shameful and wrong — it’s dangerous,” Clinton said.

The former secretary of state said Trump's proposal "plays right into the hands of terrorists" by alienating Muslims in Western countries and framing terrorism as a clash between Islam and the West.

“I don’t say that lightly, but it does. He is giving them a great propaganda tool, a way to recruit more folks from Europe and the United States," Clinton said. "And because it’s kind of crossed that line, I think everybody and especially other Republicans need to stand up and say, ‘Enough. You've gone too far.'"

Ted Cruz poised to steal Iowa from Donald Trump

Ted Cruz shot to a 10-point lead over Donald Trump in the latestBloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, putting him in prime position to win the first-in-the-nation Republican caucus on Feb. 1. But the Texas Senator may be even stronger than the top-line numbers suggest. A deeper look into the poll's crosstabs suggests that Cruz is poised to draw away even more of Trump's supporters—and that Trump may have difficulty luring those who currently favor Cruz.
Until now, Trump's great source of strength has been his support from voters without a college degree. One reason Trump has been able to maintain an overall lead in most national polls since last summer is that, as Ron Brownstein has pointed out, blue-collar workers have coalesced around him, while white-collar workers with at least a college degree have split their support among several candidates. However, the new Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll shows that Cruz, for the first time, is winning both non-college voters (Cruz 32, Trump 23, Ben Carson 13) and college voters (Cruz 29, Trump 18, Carson 12) alike.Of course, voter preference is fluid and the Iowa caucuses are still six weeks away. But Cruz's strategy of embracing, rather than attacking, Trump—even after Trump makes controversial or offensive statements—appears to have served him well, at least so far. In the new poll, respondents who say they support Trump have an extremely positive view of Cruz: 73 percent view him favorably, while 18 percent view him unfavorably. Asked to state their second-choice preference, these Trump supporters overwhelming pick Cruz (49 percent), with Rubio (16 percent) a distant second. If Trump falters or alienates his current supporters, they appear quite open to supporting Cruz.
But the reverse is less true: Cruz supporters aren't nearly as enthused at the prospect of backing Trump. Overall, they do view him positively. Sixty percent have a favorable view of Trump, versus 33 percent who view him unfavorably. Yet asked to state their second choice of candidate, Cruz supporters are about as likely to favor Ben Carson (26 percent) as they are Trump (25 percent). So Trump may have a hard time climbing back into the lead, especially if he goes on the attack against Cruz, as he did over the weekend when he told CNN he had "far better judgment than Ted."

Trump could, of course, look elsewhere to grow his support. But he may have a hard time luring people outside his base of anti-establishment male voters. Women voters, for example, could be a hard sell. Call it the "Megyn Kelly Effect": women in the poll more commonly prefer Cruz (28 percent) and Carson (16 percent) to Trump (13 percent). As strange as it may sound, maybe Trump should consider a pivot to the center and a more moderate tone.