Susan Collins (R-ME) can’t quite bring herself to back Trump – but also can’t quite bring herself to back Hillary. Normally this would be regular RINO stuff…but a lot of people are feeling that way, so we let it slide.
9th Circuit rules that carrying a concealed weapon is not covered by the 2nd Amendment. This actually strikes me as legitimate – I can’t see how a right to bear arms means a right to bear hidden arms. Of course, such a ruling brought to a new, Hillary-created 6-3 liberal majority Supreme Court is tailor made to allow said Justices to rule that the right to bear arms is collective rather than individual. So, stay tuned.
A study showing that Conservatives were bad and liberals were good turned out to be flat wrong. And by “flat wrong” I mean that the data in the study actually proved the opposite of what was initially asserted. Pro tip: there’s no such thing as “settled science”.
The absurd thing here is not merely that a school kid is being punished for insulting a vegetarian but that it had to go up to the State level for decision.
Blogs For Victory 
“..I can’t see how a right to bear arms means a right to bear hidden arms..”
Yet the 2nd Amendment is absolute—the right to bear arms—with no modifier, no qualifications, no restrictions. It took a long time come up with various efforts to modify that right, to add qualifiers. Now the goal of the disarmament crowd is to nibble away with one qualifier after another.
“Arms”—but not automatic weapons
“Arms”—but not rifles made ever so much more lethal by the addition of barrel shrouds, pistol grips, etc. 😉
“Arms”—but not with large magazines
“Arms”—but not without permission from Big Brother
“Arms”—but only visible to others (and not even then, sometimes, including law enforcement officers)
Read the amendment again, and see if you can find a “but” or an “except”.
I think it is because I still take the chivalry view of it all – armed people meeting with palms open; challenge each other on the field of honor, and all that. But, you’re right – the left will use any means it can to strip away the right to bear arms and as this case will wind it’s way to the SC, how things come out in November is even more important. In light of that, Deroy Murdock has a humorous note:
I agree with Murdock, as well as admire his Hil Chi Minh comment. Yes, with Trump there is at least a chance. Actually, early in his term I think there is a very good chance, as he will be wanting to prove us all wrong. He might nominate a good justice, he might do what Cruz said he would do and rescind Obama’s Executive Orders (at least those that exceeded his Constitutional authority and that would be a great thing because it would make it harder for him to come back later and try to use the same tactic, as he has said he would “HAVE” to if Congress would not give him his own way) and in general he would be very focused on proving that his critics were wrong about him.
I keep saying, I fear a Trump presidency less than I fear a Trump candidacy. I might be wrong. If he is the nominee I hope I am wrong. If he is the nominee I want to be wrong. I want to be wrong, in that we would not have another President Clinton, but at the same time there is the ick of having our nation represented to the world by this doofus.
Oh, well. You can’t have everything, and if necessary I agree, a Trump would give us at least a chance at SOMETHING going right. And unlike Hillary, he would probably not carry his corruption into the White House.
This is the kind of thing hanging over Trump’s head that can not only sink his chances at being elected when it is brought out by Hillary in the campaign, it will also damn the GOP, as this has been known for a long time now. I first started reading about this stuff when I realized he was serious about running, long before I thought anyone could possibly take him seriously.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910
On the other hand, Matthew Cooper has an optimistic view of the potential of a Trump presidency. Relatively optimistic, that is—we have to remember what he has to work with.
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/03/25/world-under-president-donald-trump-437158.html
Accentuate the positive, I guess. I’m pretty down on the whole thing, of course…but I’m getting more and more irritating with a bunch of fellow Conservatives virtue-signalling like they’re a bunch of Prog SJW who want to be thought of as cool.
I don’t know what you mean by “virtue signaling” or how it might make someone seem “cool”.
Well, it’s like this – fine and dandy to state opposition to Trump, but when someone is taking every Prog talking point against Trump and making it his own, then that is virtue signalling…
Actually, I was just looking for a definition of the term. I looked it up, and I like it. It is a much more elegant way of saying what I have been saying for years—claiming the Higher Moral Ground by merely being FOR something, without actually doing anything.
As for your comment:
A. We don’t have to wait till a Prog gives us a negative about Trump to know (1) that there are myriad negatives out there and (2) that we already know a lot of them.
B. Ignoring a negative about Trump because it may have been printed somewhere someone considers a Progressive site is foolish. If it is true, it is true. If it is on a Progressive site, that means the Progs know about it and will use it. As far as I am concerned, finding dirt on Trump on a Prog site, or in a Prog speech, makes it even MORE significant, because it tells me what will be used against him. I think we’d better know this. I think we HAVE to know this.
C. I don’t think we can get a good idea of the reality of Trump’s sordid history if we only look in places that like and support Trump. Gee, why not ask his mommy?
D. Seriously, you think anyone (including me) brings up any of the many things we fear might sink a Trump candidacy because they/I think it might make us look cool? Seriously? The warnings of the vast accretion of dirt on Trump is not to illustrate why we think the GOP is headed over a cliff if they nominate him and is just posturing to foster some kind of hip IMAGE?
E. You have to look at the timing. I am not bringing up negatives about Nominee Trump, who has already been selected as the official representative of the Republican Party and what it stands for, who has been chosen to run for the presidency. When and if that happens, I will no longer bring up any of the many reasons this never should have happened—unless he loses. (If that happens, I will join the millions who will be engaging in the biggest “Told You So” ever seen, rubbing the noses of the GOP and Trump supporters in it.) As the candidate, I will vote for him, and not try to convince people he is a bad choice. But now, this week and for the next month, I will continue to make the case that he should not be nominated at all, The fact that some of the facts I bring forth are already known by, and made public by, people on the Left should make them MORE significant, not less, because that means they are already known to the Opposition.
F. How can anyone thing it is a good thing to steadfastly remain in the dark about the weapons the Opposition is lining up to use against Trump TO WIN THE ELECTION? If you don’t want to know what lies ahead, then there are places you can stick your head to avoid distressing information. OR you can take a hard cold analytical look at the arsenal of the other side and plan accordingly.
It may soothe the feelings of people who deep down think Trump is OK to dismiss ugly truths about him based on who made them public, and to sneer at those who point at those truths as people merely hitching a ride on them to establish some kind of image, but I think that is not much different than dismissing the investigation into the Clinton email server because it is being pursued by Republicans.
Argue the facts, not the source. Arguing the source is merely a continuation of Identity Politics. The stakes here are very very big, far more important than simply looking for a bandwagon to jump on.
You keep your arguments against Trump to facts – a lot of righties are falling into the Prog thing of going against him on pure emotion. The concept that Trump is Hitler is along such lines…whatever he is, he isn’t Hitler…I doubt even in his worst moments he’s contemplating gassing people to death.
And they do that sort of thing because they just want everyone – and especially Progs – to know that they are wise and smart enough to not like Trump. Well, I don’t like Trump – my best friends don’t like Trump. We might wind up voting for him…or, we might vote Third Party or write someone in. However we do it, it won’t accrue moral benefit to us. We’ll just be making the best of a bad situation.
If you put quotes around a comment, cite the author, and/or link to where it can be found in its entirety, are you then “claiming it as your own”?
Last week I was talking with someone who likes Trump—not his first choice, but now he is OK with Trump as the nominee and is getting ticked off at people who refuse to support him.
I explained what I said, above—that I think he is a disastrous choice as nominee, because of his history. “But he is a good businessman”—-yet he didn’t know about the failed businesses, the bankruptcies, the people who lost their money when it was not refunded when alleged new projects never materialized, and he definitely did not know about the multitude of lawsuits for fraud, federal investigations, mob connections, and shady deals.
This is a smart guy who is also a busy guy and one who doesn’t focus very tightly on politics in general. He gets his “news” the same way most people do, he doesn’t dig into things, and his beliefs and opinions are, when he looks at them, not based on a lot of hard facts. In other words, he is an American Voter.
He didn’t like hearing bad things about Trump, and at one point when I said Trump had been investigated many times by different federal agencies his only retort was the challenge “Has he ever been CONVICTED?” I dropped it there, because that was a signal that the door was closed. If I had gone on, it would have been to point out that to believe Trump had been investigated by different federal agencies over a couple of decades for multiple things representing different kinds of crimes without being found formally legally guilty of any of them would mean a web of conspiracies and persecution, and it’s a lot more likely that Trump managed to narrowly avoid blatantly crossing a line into outright criminal activity with adequate proof of guilt but certainly skated close enough to it, many times, to attract the attention of law enforcement. At that point one would have to make a conscious decision of whether or not this is the kind of approach to dealing with business that one wants applied to running the nation, and rather than push him into making a declaration that it wouldn’t matter to him I just left it where it lay.
Now if someone knows these things and doesn’t care, doesn’t find them to be disqualifiers, then that is his choice. But if he doesn’t know (not referring just to this guy but to people in general) and finds out later when it is all dragged out and the public is hammered with one scandal after another, one gaffe after another, one shady deal after another, then he was tricked.
I am merely sharing what I know, so people who bother to follow up will know why I, and so many many others, are so concerned about Trump being the nominee.
I had a long lunch yesterday with a cousin and her husband who just moved back to Colorado, and learned that while they don’t have as much information as I do about Trump, they are equally worried about him being the nominee and equally disgusted with the GOP.
People can love Trump for whatever reasons they give, but the last thing any of them can tell ME when the excrement hits the ventilator is that I should have been more open about my reasons for dreading a terrible outcome. No one I know will be able to say to me that if I had shared what I know it might have made a difference, including the GOP. I know it makes some people uncomfortable, but when I analyze their discomfort I find that it is based on being asked to face something they just don’t want to deal with. Not because it is not true. Not because it is not valid. Not because it is not important. It is because acknowledging these things would mean reexamining their positions, and maybe having to admit some things they don’t want to admit.
Not my problem. If you take a position, you own that position. I am quite comfortable owning my position on Trump.
“The concept that Trump is Hitler is along such lines…”
It really bothers me that Hitler is exempt from all comparisons, when in fact the rise of Hitler, the nature of his appeal to Germans, the arc of his rise and then the fall of the nation that supported him, should all be open to discussion and comparison because they offer valuable lessons.
There seems to be such a squeamish knee-jerk spasm when the name “Hitler” is uttered that it immediately blanks out any understanding of the meaning of the comment and often destroys the ability to even listen to anything else the speaker might have to say, He or she is instantly tarnished by the use of the name.
I have not heard of anyone saying, or even implying, that “Trump is Hitler”. I don’t think Trump has an agenda of world domination, that he wants to eradicate a whole religion/culture, that he wants children to report to the government when their parents say something critical of it, etc. So I would have to take the comment that anyone has actually said “Trump IS Hitler” with a very large grain of salt.
Does Trump have anything in common with Hitler? Yes, he does. He is a crude and vulgar demagogue stirring people to strong emotional reactions by appealing to their fears and their anger and their frustration, for starters. He is narcissistic and emotionally unstable. He has funny hair.
We do ourselves no favors by getting the vapors every time the dreaded “H” word is uttered, and having such overwhelming negative reactions when we don’t even understand the nature or context of what was really said.
Obama’s rise had a lot in common with Hitler, as well. His speech at the 2008 convention in Denver was a chilling echo of Hitlerian rhetoric and stagecraft. I said at the time, when I saw Obama in front of those huge pillars, with the dramatic lighting, that when he was excited to learn that the venue was on Speer Boulevard he thought it was Albert Speer Boulevard. (Only a couple of people got that reference, BTW.) But the squeals of outrage at any comment relating to anything about the Big H were enough to make ears bleed.
Last year I had a bad smell in my car, and I asked the dealership to remove the back seat to see if a mouse had died under there. For a while I drove the car without the back seat reinstalled, in case the smell came back, and I commented that driving around with my back seat removed had a kind of Ted Bundy quality to it. No, that did not mean I was planning to kidnap, torture and murder girls and dump their bodies in the woods. You have to look at context before getting all wound up about things.
Hitler, though, did very clearly spell out what he wanted to do…and what he wanted to do was nothing remotely like what Trump, from what we can tell, would like to do. The closest analogy to Trump, if we want to go that far, is Mussolini…but even there the comparison is highly inexact because, once upon a time, Fascism actually meant something…and what it meant is very much not shown in any Trump statements. Trump is clearly authortarian – but no more so than Obama (or, indeed, the father of American authortarianism, Teddy Roosevelt). Trump clearly has limited grasp of what law is, or what the Constitution says…but, that is also true of Obama (and doubly astonishing in Obama as he holds himself to be a professor of Constitutional law). Trump has a problem with the truth, but it isn’t same sort of problem that Obama and Hillary have – Trump brazens his way through things; Hillary and Obama flat-out, bald-faced lie to the American people.
“Well, I don’t like Trump – my best friends don’t like Trump”
So what are you doing about it? Muttering about not liking him over a beer after work, or contacting your state party people and telling them how you feel? What have you DONE to try to get a different nominee for the Republican Party? Does anyone in the hierarchy of the Nevada State GOP know that Mark Noonan, and a lot of his friends, don’t want Trump to be the nominee? Does anyone at the national level know this? Have you tried to tell anyone in power at any level of the party that you will back them up and support a decision to choose someone else?
(As I said, I guessed at r.priebus@gop.com as an email address, and nothing has been returned as undeliverable. The national folks clearly don’t give a damn about what we think, as they don’t give us a way to tell them, but this might be one way.)
Would fighting for what you think is right “accrue moral benefit”? Does being passive while a wrong is being done carry with it a deficit in moral courage? You are the one who keeps making comments on people gaining, or trying to gain, some kind of moral cred, so you must think about it.
Mark, regarding your comment on Trump/Hitler. Yes, you are right. Trump is not advocating Hitlerian governance, tyranny, genocide, world domination, etc. So a comparison of Trump to Hitler on those grounds would just be stupid.
But the similarities of vulgar populist demagogues stirring up emotions of anger and fear and yes, even hatred, to gain political power and control? Yes, they exist.
The vulgar populism, translated into the White House, will be quite bad, I think…
Right now, everything seems to be gearing up for a big Hillary win…except that, so far, there isn’t much indication that the GOP is suffering much down-ballot risk (in fact, our only real high risk Senate seats at the moment are Illinois and Florida – and Florida probably drops back into the lap if Rubio gets back in…while in Pennsylvania Toomey looks solid for re-election and there’s still a better than 50/50 shot that the GOP wins Reid’s seat in Nevada).
Wow. I never thought I would ever see a couple of hard core conservatives argue whither or not the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is like Hitler or Mussolini. I agree that he is pretty bad and while I have never been a Hilary fan, I have no problem voting for her over him. For every new voter Trump brings to your side, he is bringing in two for our side. Hispanics are registering at record rates and may bring some states into play for the blue that no one would have predicted a year ago. Should be am interesting race.
Hillary is more akin to a Mafia Don…though Mafia Don’s tend to be more honest. And as Amazona points out, that is your problem…the whole problem with the left: you refuse to see what you don’t want to see. Obama has been a horrible President and Hillary is just setting the stage to be, if anything, worse. But there you go – making out like Hillary is a superior choice for President. Got a news flash for you: she isn’t. She’s much, much worse.
Whither? An example of Wyoming education?
As usual, Casper, you are clueless. Aside from the fact that I don’t think anyone has mentioned Mussolini, you seem to have managed to completely overlook the references to comparing the POLITICAL STYLE of Trump to that of Hitler, which is a very far cry from saying he is “like” Hitler. But that’s OK, just what we have learned to expect from you,
You should take this as a teachable event. Our critiques of Trump show a major difference between conservatives and Liberals. Liberals fall in line behind whoever is put in front of them, uncaring of scandal, corruption, dishonesty, and even criminality. On the Right, at least a significant number of us retain our commitment to choosing the best person for the job and demanding good character and other qualifications.
If Dems were having the same kinds of conversations about Hillary, I would have more respect for them. I am not ashamed of the intra-party debates about Trump—-I think it is something to be proud of.
And the fact is, as much as I dislike Trump as a candidate, I still think he is much better than Hillary. Another thing you have missed is that my concerns center on the gutter politics of Hillary and her history of personal attacks on opponents. All you see is the criticism of Trump, as usual blissfully unaware of the core issue, which is that anyone going up against the Dem hate and smear machine had better not have much baggage.
I don’t think there has ever been any question about who Casper would vote for. He votes for whoever the Dems put in front of him. Any pretense that he would ever consider voting for someone else is just that—posturing as a thoughtful citizen wanting the best for the country, while knowing he will never vote for anyone but whoever his Dem masters tell him to support.
Casper probably didn’t understand what I meant any of the times I said “I fear a Trump presidency far less than I fear a Trump candidacy”.
Trump has a sordid history of general bad behavior, all of which can and will be used against him in the campaign. So does Hillary.
But here is where they differ. Trump’s type of bad behavior is not likely to follow him into the White House. His bullying, blustering personal style will, and some of his personality traits, but I don’t think he is going to start working with Mob members again as president, or use unethical methods to make a business profitable. And there are good aspects to a Trump presidency—he has given us a list of potential Supreme Court nominees who are all very good, and he won’t veto bills based on a socialist ideology and agenda. Once in office, his biggest drawback is going to be his personality.
This is where the differences between him and Hillary stand out. Her bad behaviors have all taken place within a political arena. Her entire history has been one of political corruption, of using political power to advance personal agendas (most of which seem to be financial) and of putting national security at risk in favor of those agendas. Starting with the old Bill Clinton days of illegally soliciting and taking contributions from foreigners (which led to the isolation of intelligence agencies from each other to prevent them from sharing information on these illegal acts) both Clintons have considered government as a means to their own ends, regardless of consequences to the nation. From her ineptitude as Secretary of State to her blatant corruption as Secretary of State, actually selling the favor of the United States Government, to her callous dismissal of the welfare of those under her command and her subsequent lies about why they were killed, she has proved herself to be the worst possible choice as president.
I don’t like what Trump has done, but he didn’t do anything under an umbrella of trust provided by a position in the government of the United States. There is a vast difference between hiring illegals to work on a job to cut costs and putting the favor of our entire country on the market to the highest bidder. Betraying a wife in a sordid sexual affair is hardly the same as betraying people who count on you for their very lives and leaving them to die. And nothing Trump ever did or ever could do as a private citizen could compare to putting our national security at risk by refusing to use secure means of communication, AS REQUIRED BY LAW, as Hillary did. This is made even worse, if that can even be possible, by her reasons—-she knew she was going to use her office for unethical if not downright illegal purposes, for her own personal profit and advancement, and wanted to keep its communications outside the authority of the FOIA.
Trump, in an entirely new position, with a list of promises that got him there and what I believe are good intentions, has a chance of doing some good. Hillary has a proven record, proved over and over again, that she seeks the reins of power for her own personal advancement and will break any law and violate any trust, as well as put our entire nation at risk, to that end. I think that Trump, for all his many flaws, sees problems in this country he thinks he can help fix, while Hillary is just pursuing the one thing that has been denied her and has given us absolutely no reason to think she will not continue to use this country as toilet tissue, as long as she gets what she wants.
This is why I fear the campaign, where Trump’s many problems can and will be used against him, where we CAN lose the election, much more than I fear the consequences of a President Trump.
And I believe anyone who votes for the woman who used her position as Secretary of State to sell the favor of our nation to foreign interests, whose utter incompetence and callousness allowed people serving this country to die and then lied about what had happened, and who put our entire national security at risk in an effort to set up a communications system that would allow her to protect communications related to her use of her position for personal gain is putting party loyalty above the security of our country, and I think it is despicable.
You, Casper, when you vote for Hillary in November, are going to be saying you don’t care what she has done and it doesn’t bother you that she will probably do the same kinds of things in the future, when she has even more power. as long as it puts a D in the White House.
We suffered the worst attack ever on U.S. soil because her husband and his minions manipulated our intelligence services, blocking interagency communications to keep them from comparing notes on his criminal acts. Hillary violated all protocol and common sense and made what were supposed to be secure and confidential communications available to any mid-level hacker to try to cover up her selling of American support, And you Dems just eat this all up with a spoon and holler “Gimme some more a them Clintons! “
“Pro tip: there’s no such thing as “settled science”.” Yes there is: Gravity, Speed of light, Laws of motion, etc.
Science is “settled” till it’s not. Gravity, the speed of light, the laws of motion, etc. will remain settled unless or until new data are acquired. For now, it’s as good as it gets.
We don’t even know, yet, what really makes for gravity, Casper – we just can observe it’s effects…and those effects are somewhat weird. What people 100 years from now will understand of those things will make us look like we were stone knives and bear claws.
You may consider this “virtue signaling”. It’s not an effort to jump on a anti-Trump bandwagon (though I have been on one all along) or even to convince anyone of Trump’s defects. As I keep saying, evidently not clearly enough to be understood, my intent is to remind us of Trump’s weaknesses as a potential candidate, before a final decision is made.
It is not to change anyone’s mind about Trump as a person, but to point out the folly of nominating someone with so much really ugly baggage, all of which is going to be laid out in exquisite detail in every living room in America every night throughout the election cycle.
Tonight I saw my first anti-Trump ad, and it was devastating. I don’t think I have ever seen such an effective political ad. I hate political ads and am very very skeptical of any I have ever seen, but this one was so powerful, and so well done, I don’t see how it can fail to impress people. It is about a family with a disabled daughter, and the family and the little girl are very well presented, without the heavy-handed schmaltz that these things usually employ. You don’t even know where it is headed, as it presents a lovely and touching picture of a little girl whose disabilities and triumphs are explained by her loving parents—-and then when you are touched by her story they show Donald Trump mocking and ridiculing someone with a disability. It is the best-structured, best-written, best acted, most effective political ad I have ever seen. Because I can’t stand to watch the gilded toad, I had not seen the video of him spazzing out, twitching and jerking his hands and head in ridicule of a man with a physical condition that affects his movement, but it was so ugly, it was horrible to watch on its own, and in the context of a film clip of a lovely little girl with a similar disability it was, as I said, devastating.
As the father of the disabled girl said, it shows Trump’s soul.
I am glad it has come out before out national convention, as the party has plenty of time to see it and digest it and consider how it, and no doubt many many others, are going to impact the election. It left me with a sick feeling of dread, an “OMG, and this is before he is even nominated! We are going to have almost five months of ads like this!” It is bad enough to see smear campaigns when they have to lie, but when they are telling the truth………….
http://www.dailywire.com/news/6367/democrats-begin-ad-campaign-against-trump-james-barrett
I highly recommend
Neutered by Neutrality: The Abiding Influence of John Rawls, Part Two
by Randall Smith
From the article: emphasis mine
“Rawlsian bracketing requires that the liberal state deny the possibility that any of the moral claims arising from within any comprehensive doctrines might in fact be true. Public neutrality, it seems, can only be secured by negating the truth claims of all moral and religious doctrines.
The result is what Pope Benedict XVI has termed the “dictatorship of relativism.” It may not seem like a dictatorship, because its claim to legitimacy is based precisely on allowing each person his or her own view. But when every view must be held to be equally legitimate, and the perspective from which one judges truth cannot be rationally justified, then no view can be taken seriously as making a rational claim upon anyone else. My view is merely “my” view, and your view is merely “yours.” The entry fee for gaining access to public conversation is setting aside one’s moral and religious beliefs. For political purposes, I must act as a moral relativist, which means acting as though moral relativism were true.
Thus, the system is rigged to move always in the direction of moral license. “
It is interesting, and perhaps helpful, to discuss moral relativity and moral license from a perspective that is not based on religion but it is more objective, in much the same way that Thomas Sowell’s brilliant Conflict of Visions helps explain the internal view of the world that inclines people to either Leftist or Conservative governance.
Jun 14, 2016 07:00 am http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2016/06/17068/
I find the site Public Discourse to have excellent articles and commentary, and highly recommend it. I have subscribed to it, so I get articles on a regular basis, and they are inevitably well thought out and well written.