Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:
We’re now out of nomination politics (barring any late-breaking “dump Trump” effort), and the general-election campaign is on. If there was any doubt about that, Barack Obama’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton today will be the flag to start the race.
What happens now?
From Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass:
Shame on everyone who ever fell for the scam that public services should be “run like a business.” A business does not serve the public. A business rakes in profit for its owner(s.) Public services – like hospitals and universities – do not rake in profits. Its owners are the taxpaying public to which the public entity provides services.
The two are not the same and cannot work together.
From Infidel753:
Now that both parties have pretty much wrapped up their nomination processes, the two chosen champions are beginning to show how they’ll wage the real fight. On the grown-up side, Hillary’s foreign-policy speech last week filleted Trump and amped up enthusiasm among supporters — in part, I suspect, because it signaled that the long dreary Clinton-Sanders battle is over and we’re turning our artillery on the bad guys instead of each other. A pro-Hillary PAC also released this ad:
Twenty years after Richard Nixon announced his resignation, and a few months after the once most powerful man in the world died, iconic conservative William F. Buckley told of his brief contact with the ethic of the Nixon White House. Buckley had been invited to meet with President Nixon in 1970. At that meeting, the President offered to support his brother James Buckley as an independent conservative candidate against New York Senator Charles Goodell.
He then thought to give me some political advice to pass along to Candidate Buckley. “Tell him when he is being heckled at one of his speeches to go right up to spitting distance of the protester. The television cameras will catch that face-to-face encounter and that means votes for the law and order candidate.
Mr. Haldeman took it from there. “Bill, get a couple of guys from Young Americans for Freedom. Tell them to dress up like Woodstock protesters and have them throw an egg or some ketchup at your brother. That will make it into the evening television news.
– William F. Buckley, August 8, 1994
Richard Nixon had made into an art form the goading of dissidents. He would climb onto any available makeshift platform, the trunk of an automobile would do, to egg on those who hated what he stood for. As long as news cameras focused on the uncouth opposition, he would come out ahead.
As Buckley later noted, if the angry young could not be tempted into violence, a few supporters in disguise could be counted on to throw whatever was handy.
Along the political spectrum, the more conservative, or the more authoritarian nearly always benefits from violence committed by perceived opponents. It seems natural. It is human nature to want to strike back at the bad guys, and the violent are usually the bad guys. Striking back with votes can mean voting for those most loudly calling for strong action against perpetrators.
All the ingredients are with us today for the Nixon recipe to work.
The indefensible violence against Donald Trump supporters is captured by camera and and documented in credible narrative. Deadly violence by America’s enemies, indeed the enemies of the safety and freedom of modern civilization, is horrific. The death toll is greater with each incident.
With every incident of terror, supporters join the candidate in praising his predictive abilities and his toughness. And they express joyful glee at the success those tragedies guarantee for Donald Trump’s quest for the office of President.
They can wait if they like until next November for the actual balloting, but Donald Trump was elected president tonight.
– Ann Coulter, November 13, 2015
after the terrorist attack on a cafe in Paris.
This is not new. It was not new in the days of Nixon ascendancy.
It did not start with the Reichstag fire, propelling Hitler to power with the promise of exterminating leftists, Jews, and other dangerous undesirables. It did not even begin with the burning of Rome 2,000 years before that. Nero promised to eliminate the dangerous Christians who started the destruction. When rumors became rampant that Nero himself had sent thugs to commit the arson, his opponents promised to eliminate the dangerous Emperor.
It did not end with the riots of the late 1960s, the student demonstrations into the 1970s, or with Richard Nixon’s provocations through that period.
The battle cry never varies.
Enough is enough. We will put an end to it … and to them.
It has always worked.
Until now.
Donald Trump’s approval, as measured in one poll after another does not match the gloating. The predicted rise does not occur.
Part of that may come from the naked partisanship of the reactions. Ordinary people, people capable of any depth of empathy, would not express joy at such tragedy. When there exist human beings who seem incapable of feeling anything beyond political calculation, we add to our mourning for the dead the additional prayer for lost souls.
The death toll of the Orlando night club massacre may stay at around 50, if we are granted a miracle and all of the remaining wounded survive. It is already the most massive single instance of spontaneous gun violence in American history.
Mr. Trump’s initial reaction was only the beginning:
Appreciate the congrats for being right…
Excuse me?
Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!
– Donald Trump, June 12, 2016, via Twitter
Mr. Trump goes on to imply that President Obama is not only weak, but may have a hidden motive for his tepid response.
We’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind.
Something else in mind.
There’s something going on — it’s inconceivable. There’s something going on. He doesn’t get it, or he gets it better than anybody understands. It’s one or the other, and either one is unacceptable.
Something inconceivable going on. The President doesn’t get it, or … maybe … he gets it better than anybody understands.
So the President is in on the attack? He is a co-conspirator with terrorists?
For the record, Donald Trump was … not to put too fine a point on it … incorrect when he claimed to have predicted the Orlando attack, except to the extent that every child who has learned to talk could predict that terrorists will continue to attack. There was a prediction, however, that was prescient.
I just came from a meeting today in the Situation Room in which I’ve got people who we KNOW have been on ISIL websites, living here in the United States – US citizens. And we’re allowed to put them on the no fly list when it comes to airlines.
But because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun.
This is somebody who is a known ISIL sympathizer. And if he wants to walk into a gun store or a gun show right now, and buy as many weapons and ammo as he can, nothing is prohibiting him from doing that. Even though the FBI knows who that person is.
– President Barack Obama, June 1, 2016
That terrorists in the Middle East are motivated by a corrupt interpretation of Islam is not in dispute. No-one is in denial. The refusal to declare, or even imply, some sort of war against Islam is motivated by a fidelity to truth combined with a strategic desire not to insist that all Muslim believers take sides against us.
Even conservative critics of Barack Obama occasionally acknowledge that the President holds the all time record for capturing and killing terrorists and their leaders.
In a country of hundreds of millions there will remain some portion of humanity who will take seriously someone who expresses self-congratulatory glee at deadly violence, and then follow with accusations that cross over some ugly ragged edge into a land of delusional paranoia.
Demagogues of the past knew how to turn human tragedy to their benefit. Donald’s ham-handed approach blows away the advantage that others would have used.
He has described himself in many ways. He is the biggest, the best. And he is the loudest.
Donald is a candidate of superlatives.
He is the most successful businessman, the smartest graduate, the toughest candidate, the best thing that ever happened to evangelicals, the most attractive to women, believe me, believe me.
Each word and phrase goes further, farther, higher, beyond anything expected. He gloats at tragedy, appreciating the congratulations he believes to be flowing his way. He is the most perceptive of prognosticators.
The superlatives do not stop there. The President he opposes is the very worst. The conspiracies Donald imagines are the very best. They go higher and farther than that imagined any anyone else.
He is the superlative candidate, caught in the best trap ever, a trap devised by Trump himself.
Donald is a demagogic captive, limited, made small by his own talk, imprisoned with steel-like bars made of the stern stuff of his highest, loudest, most extreme, most conspiratorial, most extravagant rhetorical excesses.
Believe me. Believe me.
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:
It makes a kind of sense that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton gave speeches to two very different groups this Friday–they are two very different candidates and they do not substantially share a worldview. Donald Trump spoke in front of the Faith and Freedom Conference, where he was protested (because I think he might actually being paying protesters at this point to attract cameras and further the idea that he is an exciting and dangeous candidate, if you want to know what sort of things I think about this weird Potemkin campaign) Hillary Clinton spoke in front of Planned Parenthood, the embattled reproductive health provider that has faced actual existential threats from the very sort of people who attend the Faith and Freedom Conference.
That right there strikes me as very different! For what it’s worth, the Faith and Freedom shindy is an event at which a sitting US Senator who isn’t even especially known as a firebrand suggested that it was funny to pray for President Obama’s death–a joke which isn’t even especially new.
From Jon Perr at Perrspectives:
From the beginning of his unlikely quest for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump has enjoyed the strong backing of those GOP voters who say they want a successful businessman in the White House. After only his outsider status, Gallup polling showed earlier this year, backers of the real estate mogul turned reality TV star cited his record as a “good businessman” as the leading factor driving their support. A staggering 64 percent of those surveyed said Trump would be the best Republican candidate on the economy and jobs; 61 percent claimed he would best handle the federal budget deficit.
Anecdotes from the campaign trail support those numbers. While casino magnate and Republican sugar daddy Sheldon Adelson jumped on the bandwagon by explaining, “Trump is a businessman; I am a businessman,” one GOP acolyte boasted “ONLY TRUMP has ever BUILT any REAL THINGS.” Another showed he had completely drunk the Kool-Aid:
“We want to give a businessman the chance to prove that this country can be great again!”
But a recent survey of Fortune 500 CEO’s found that the leaders of America’s largest companies surprisingly prefer Democrat Hillary Clinton over The Donald by a 58 to 42 percent margin.
From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger.com:
Once again we have a poll on what the American public thinks of the two major political parties. It is the YouGov Poll done between May 20th and 23rd of a random national sample of 2,000 adults (with a margin of error of slightly less than 3 points).
It shows that the public is not happy with either political party — but they are a lot more disappointed in the Republican Party than the Democratic Party. While the public gives the Democrats a 1 point margin in favorability (47% to 46%), they give the Republicans a 35 point deficit in favorability (28% to 63%). That should scare the hell out of Republicans running for re-election — especially those in districts that are considered close.
Why is this?
From The Intersection of Madness and Reality:
Christopher Allen Simcox is a Republican. Back in 2010, Simcox launched an unsuccessful bid against incumbent U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona, in the Republican primary. Simcox is also the co-founder of a border militia group that essentially hunted undocumented immigrants on the southern border. I don’t know whether Simcox is a supporter of Donald Trump, however, I would not be surprised if he is.
Given that Donald Trump has color-aroused supporters believing that “Mexicans” who enter the country illegally are rapists, the irony of this story is thick. In fact, I think the irony machine is now officially broken.
This from Yahoo:
Christopher Allen Simcox, who co-founded the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in 2005, was found guilty of two felony counts of child molestation and one felony count of providing obscene material to a minor by the Maricopa County Superior Court jury.
From PZ Myers at Pharyngula:
There most certainly are people who made sincere conversions from a state of godlessness to one of devout certainty. This is actually a very interesting process, and I’d like to know more about it, because I can’t imagine myself ever becoming a god-believer. I want to understand what makes for a persuasive argument for patent nonsense.
One example is Holly Ordway, an atheist professor of literature who became a Catholic. She’s got a whole memoir on the subject, which I haven’t read because all the summaries make it sound awful and unbelievable.
For example, Ordway describes her state of atheism:
Dr. Holly Ordway has published a book titled Not God’s Type, telling her personal story. She begins “I had never in my life said a prayer, never been to a church service. Christmas meant presents and Easter meant chocolate bunnies–nothing more.” But her views get hardened: “In college, I absorbed the idea that Christianity was historical curiosity, or a blemish on modern civilization, or perhaps both. My college science classes presented Christians as illiterate anti-intellectuals who, because they didn’t embrace Darwinism, threatened the advancement of knowledge. My history classes omitted or downplayed references to historical figures’ faith.” Still later, “At thirty-one years old, I was an atheist college professor–and I delighted in thinking of myself that way. I got a kick out of being an unbeliever; it was fun to consider myself superior to the unenlightened, superstitious masses, and to make snide comments about Christians.”
Uh, what? I’m probably about as radical and harsh an atheist as you’ll find on any college campus, and am openly hostile to Christianity. But even I don’t teach what she claims:
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:
Dr. Patrick Johnston is an Ohio family practice physician, founder of the Association of Pro-life Physicians, and the director of Personhood Ohio. He and his wife have nine children, all of whom are homeschooled. Several years ago, Johnston wrote a rebuttal to a post that I published about my views on abortion and personhood laws. Johnston believes there are no justifiable reasons for women to have abortions. Rape? Nope. Incest? Nope. Life of the mother? Nope or maybe. Severe physical malformation? Nope. Ectopic(tubal) pregnancy? Nope Huh? That’s right, Johnston does not think women should have access to abortion services if they have an ectopic pregnancy. In a December 2015 Personhood Ohio article, Johnston stated:
Many sincere advocates of life fall prey to the argument that abortion is occasionally necessary to save the life of the mother. An example of an ectopic pregnancy is often given. However, a cursory investigation of the evidence reveals that many babies have survived ectopic pregnancies. There are life-saving alternatives to treat the mother and her ectopically-implanted baby. Successful transplantation of the embryo from the Fallopian tube to the uterus has been reported in the medical literature as far back as 1917. We do not have to kill these babies to save the mother. Their cases is not hopeless.