Several instances of the chalking of “TRUMP 2016” at various locations on the Emory campus provoked student demonstrations and demands for administrative action.
Students protested yesterday at the Emory Administration Building following a series of overnight, apparent pro-Donald Trump for president chalkings throughout campus.
Roughly 40 students gathered shortly after 4:30 p.m. in the outdoors space between the Administration Building and Goodrich C. White Hall; many students carried signs featuring slogans such as “Stop Trump†or “Stop Hate†and an antiphonal chant addressed to University administration, led by College sophomore Jonathan Peraza, resounded “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!†throughout the Quad. …
“I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here],†one student said. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school,†she added. …
“[Faculty] are supporting this rhetoric by not ending it,†said one student, who went on to say that “people of color are struggling academically because they are so focused on trying to have a safe community and focus on these issues [related to having safe spaces on campus].â€
The Emory Administration responded affirmatively with new regulations requiring campus reservation service permission before scribbling with chalk, restricting chalkable surfaces, and limiting the duration chalked messages will be permitted to survive. University President James W, Wagner additionally promised “immediate refinements to certain policy and procedural deficiencies, regular and structured opportunities for difficult dialogues, a formal process to institutionalize identification, review and [the] addressing of social justice opportunities and issues and a commitment to an annual retreat to renew our efforts.â€
Czech president Milos Zeman, known for his fiery anti-migrant rhetoric, claimed on Sunday it was “practically impossible†to integrate the Muslim community into European society.
“The experience of western European countries which have ghettos and excluded localities shows that the integration of the Muslim community is practically impossible,†Zeman said in a televised interview.
“Let them have their culture in their countries and not take it to Europe, otherwise it will end up like Cologne,†he added, referring to the mass New Year’s Eve assaults on women in Germany and elsewhere.
“Integration is possible with cultures that are similar, and the similarities may vary,†pointing out that the Vietnamese and Ukrainian communities had been able to integrate into Czech society.
Zeman, a 71-year-old leftwinger and the first-ever directly elected president of the Czech Republic, has repeatedly spoken out against the surge of migrant and refugee arrivals in Europe.
Which attacks, you know, really, are what we used to call An Act of War.
Personally, I think the Belgian Army, all by itself, would be quite adequate to march through all the territories controlled by ISIS, shoot all armed opposition, and generally do to that portion of the Fertile Crescent what Sherman did for a 50 mile-wide stretch of territory between Atlanta and Savannah. But Belgium is, after all, part of NATO, and the NATO Treaty says that attack on one NATO member state is an attack on all of them. So all of NATO ought to declare war, today, and start assembling Operation Sherman, the military expedition intended to make large portions of Northern Syria and Western Iraq howl.
Mona Charen explains that the problem with the Trump candidacy is Donald Trump’s character. His character is bad, and his behavior is off-the-charts not normal.
Donald Trump is not emotionally healthy. No normal man sits up late at night tweeting dozens of insults about Megyn Kelly, or skips a key debate because he’s nursing a grudge against her for asking perfectly ordinary questions, or continues to obsess about her weeks and months after the fact.
A normal, well-adjusted man does not go to great lengths to prove to a random journalist that he has normal sized fingers. Some may think it was Rubio who introduced the “small hands†business, but it actually dates back to an encounter Trump had 25 years ago with journalist Graydon Carter. Carter had referred to Trump as a “stubby fingered vulgarian†in Spy magazine. Trump could not let it go. Carter told Vanity Fair in 2015:
To this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump. There is always a photo of him — generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers . . . The most recent offering arrived earlier this year, before his decision to go after the Republican presidential nomination. Like the other packages, this one included a circled hand and the words, also written in gold Sharpie: “See, not so short!â€
Notice he didn’t contest the “vulgarian†part of the insult. And remember that at a presidential debate, for God’s sake, Trump brought it up himself and assured the world that “there is no problem, believe me.†I don’t believe him, and I’m not talking about his genitals.
There is an enormous problem. Trump seems to suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, an insecurity so consuming and crippling that he has devoted his life to self-aggrandizement. This is far beyond the puffery that most salesmen indulge to some degree. It strays well into the bizarre. Asked whom he consults on foreign policy Trump said “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.†What grown man says things like that and continues to be taken seriously? How can he be leading the race for the Republican nomination?
Obama’s visit to Cuba is almost entirely gestural. He would need Congressional approval to lift completely the trade embargo, so he is just exploiting every little legal loophole he can, and applying the prestige of the US presidency and the symbolism of a fawning presidential visit to buff up the Cuban revolutionary cause.
Obama’s photo represents a humiliating day for Americans, as this US president, one more time, demonstrates his personal admiration for, and agreement with, America’s prime enemies. And it constituted a real slap in the face to Americans of Cuban, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Hungarian, Czech, Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, and every other Captive Nations background.
Barack Obama in eight years was only able to nationalize one sixth of the US economy, but he was unfortunately able to disgrace the country one hundred per cent yesterday.
UK Shooting News describes the latest supervisory crackdown by British authorities on firearms access.
Security services have quietly acquired the details of every single person in the UK with access to firearms and put them on a database with known terrorists. …
All new members of Home Office approved rifle clubs have their personal details – name, address, telephone number, and so on – transmitted to the police by the club. This data transmission is a condition of clubs securing Home Office approval, which is a legal status that allows non-firearm certificate holders to handle firearms and shoot at club events.
Once that information is received by the police, it is run through the same databases used to vet firearm and shotgun certificate holders: the Police National Computer, local force intelligence databases (such as STORM), the Police National Database (to look up the history of properties associated with that person), and Special Branch’s records.
Police forces typically make no response to applicants or clubs unless a person’s history returns a hit. Although the Home Office’s intent with this system was to allow rifle clubs to work together with police in managing risks associated with new members, in the one case where UK Shooting News’ author was involved as a club secretary, all the Metropolitan Police would say is “we would not grant this person an FAC [“Firearms Certificate”]†despite repeated questioning. It turned out that the prospective member in question had accepted a caution for ABH [“Assault Occasioning Bodily Harm”] when he was 18, having been caught up in a mass pub brawl. …
As well as rifle club members, FAC, SGC [“Shotgun Certificate” and RFD [“Registered Firearms Dealer”] holders and their servants, the database is likely to include armed forces personnel and reservists, police employees, volunteer cadet instructors, Border Force employees, security services employees, large civilian ships’ crews (signalling equipment is typically licensed as firearms), MoD contractors, some private security firms’ employees, and probably a multitude of other categories as well.
A conservative estimate of the number of people these categories cover suggests the numbers run into the millions – meaning that slightly more than 1 in 65 of the entire UK population is now on a state database alongside known terrorists. Moreover, the existence of a single database with personal details of people who can lay their hands on legal firearms is an instant target for hackers working in concert with organised crime, terrorists or even foreign state actors. The very fact that it exists makes every member of the licensed firearms community less safe and more exposed to criminals and terrorists.
Heather Wilhelm has the same problem I do: understanding how people can tolerate Donald Trump’s shameless mendacity and still support him.
[In a recent New York Times Trump profile], “a kind of unofficial historian at Mar-a-Lago,†recalls how Trump, among other various fibs and exaggerations, “liked to tell guests that the nursery rhyme-themed tiles†in the children’s suite “were made by a young Walt Disney.†Senecal, a seemingly normal person, would often correctly protest that this was not true. Trump, in return, would simply laugh and offer a simple reply: “Who cares?â€
Who cares, indeed? A significant swath of voters apparently doesn’t. As the 2016 presidential race has unfolded, we’ve seen lies flying around like stray car parts at a low-budget demolition derby — with Donald Trump as the fast-and-loose king of blatant untruths, and people so inured to it all that they don’t even bother to flinch or duck.
In just the past few weeks, Trump has told so many lies it’s hard to know which ones to cite. He famously lied about serving Trump steaks at a press conference on national television — they were “Bush Brothers†steaks, hilariously, from a butcher in West Palm Beach. On March 7 and 11, Trump claimed he was “not taking money†for his “self-funded†campaign, which might come as a surprise to the individuals from across the country who have donated a reported $7.5 million to his campaign. …
Trump supporters tend to get irritated when confronted with things like the blatantly fake Trump steaks served up in front of a national audience: “Who cares?†— unsurprisingly — is a common reply. This is somewhat puzzling, given that many Trump fans claim to like him because he “tells it like it is.†It’s also puzzling because if you know anything about life, you likely know this: When someone consistently lies about little, inconsequential things, they tend to lie about big, consequential things too. [Emphasis added]
And so it is that we have Donald Trump telling his Iowa supporters, “I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees†if someone decides to “knock the crap†out of a protester. More recently, on Meet the Press, Trump told Chuck Todd he had “instructed my people to look into†paying legal fees for a man who, apparently taking Trump’s advice, sucker-punched a protester at a rally in North Carolina, then told the press he’d be happy to kill someone for Donald Trump. But wait! What’s that? Why, it’s Donald Trump on Good Morning America, claiming he “never said†he was going to pay legal fees, even though the video of Donald Trump saying just that is captured all over the Internet and easily accessible with a few effortless clicks.
Then there’s the Donald Trump who, after months and months of claiming that Mexico would pay for his wall, recently told Sean Hannity, “Politically, that’s not feasible.†Oh, and there’s the Donald Trump who linked to a hoax video that claimed one of his protesters had ties to ISIS: “All I know,†he said when asked about the inaccuracy, “is what’s on the Internet.†Unfortunately, the various dancing cats and escaped Area 51 aliens and Nigerian princes who reside on the Internet were unavailable to comment for this story.
Politicians have lied for centuries, of course; it’s practically part of the job description. In this, Trump is certainly not alone. … [But, t]raditionally, politicians have at least tried to hide their dishonesty, due to the assumption that voters would care.
They tell me that they want a Revolution, but my reply is: If you want to end the Republic and turn power over to an Emperor, at least take the trouble to make sure he’s an Octavian, and not a Caligula.
It is clear then that a state (πόλις) is not a mere society, having a common place (κοινωνία τόπου), established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. These are conditions without which a state cannot exist; but all of them together do not constitute a state, which is a community of families and aggregations of families in well-being, for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing life. Such a community can only be established among those who live in the same place and intermarry. Hence arise in cities family connections, brotherhoods, common sacrifices, amusements which draw men together. But these are created by friendship (φιλίας), for the will to live together is friendship. The end of the state is the good life, and these are the means towards it. And the state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life.
Our conclusion, then, is that political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship. Hence they who contribute most to such a society have a greater share in it than those who have the same or a greater freedom or nobility of birth but are inferior to them in political virtue; or than those who exceed them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue.”
S.A. Miller, at the Washington Times, explains that close has very commonly historically proven to be not good enough in nominating convention delegate votes. Donald Trump would by no means be the first candidate to arrive at a GOP convention with more votes than his rival candidates, but short of the necessary majority. It has frequently happened that the front runner then proved unable to attract the necessary extra votes and another man became the nominee. Just ask Thomas E. Dewey.
If Donald Trump finds himself in a contested convention this summer, a looming question for the Republican presidential front-runner will be whether he is a Lincoln or a Dewey.
Mr. Trump obviously would prefer to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, who emerged the nominee from a brokered Republican convention in 1860 and went on to win the White House and become one of America’s most revered presidents.
Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, the experience of Thomas E. Dewey at contested Republican conventions is more common and far less inspirational. The front-runner heading into a contested Republican convention has never won the White House and most of the time does not even secure the party’s nomination. …
“The notion that you go in with a plurality, therefore you deserve the nomination is just flat wrong,” said Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the Dallas-based think tank Institute for Policy Innovation.
“It would not surprise me if we go to a contested convention and Trump ends up losing in that contested convention,” he said. “But I think it is too early to say. We have to see if the voters begin to gravitate toward him, as they typically do in presidential elections, and even if he doesn’t get 1,237, if the momentum is clearly behind him, I think it would be hard to deny him the nomination.”
Still, Mr. Matthews stressed that Mr. Trump will have to close the deal on the convention floor.
“He’s got to make the case to the delegates there,” he said. “He needs to persuade the other delegates that they should change their vote to him.”
Dewey ended up like most candidates who enter the Republican convention with the most delegates but short a majority — a position Mr. Trump could easily find himself in July in Cleveland — either passed over for the nomination or the loser in the general election.
Dewey experienced both outcomes. He was denied the nomination in 1940 and received it in 1948 only to lose that November to Democrat Harry S. Truman, despite the famously erroneous banner headline on the front page of The Chicago Daily Tribune.
In 1940 and eight years later, Dewey had a plurality of delegates when the convention opened.
In the history of the Republican Party, there have been 10 conventions where no candidate arrived with a majority of the delegates needed to clinch the nomination on the first ballot.
At seven of those brokered conventions, the candidate who arrived with the most delegates did not win the nomination. Half the time, the nomination went to the candidate who had the fewest delegates.
Lincoln was one of the candidates with the fewest delegates at the start of the convention. Another was Rep. James A. Garfield of Ohio, who entered the Chicago convention with no delegates but got the nomination after 36 ballots, the longest convention vote in Republican history.
In all three cases, when the candidates with the most delegates at the start of a contested convention emerged as the nominee, that candidate lost in the general election. Dewey shares that dubious distinction with Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes and U.S. Sen. James G. Blaine of Maine.
