Patterico's Pontifications

6/2/2016

Breaking: Violence Against Trump Supporters in San Jose

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:50 pm



Animals.

Note how the media people are hyper-focused on whether the guy “provoked” the attack. Similarly, we have this:

The tweet from CNN reported Sara Murray says:

Protesters cornering Trump supporters as they leave. This woman taunted them. They cornered her & threw eggs at her

“This woman taunted them.” Is that so?

Because this fellow says they taunted her:

[UPDATE: OK, “taunting” is not necessarily completely unfair, given this video — although obviously it does not justify egging the woman. Jan Crawford says it better: “I see a woman being defiant and holding her ground in the face of angry crowd screaming and threatening to overwhelm her.” Exactly.]

None of this will cause me to vote for Trump. But it’s about as effective an ad for voting Trump as I can imagine. It’s an emotional punch straight to the gut.

Jake Tapper on the Obama Administration Lies about Covering Up Lies

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:30 pm



For background, you can read this post of mine — or just watch the video. Tapper does a fantastic job laying everything out.

Tapper is right that the Obama administration should tell us who is behind all these lies. Of course, they won’t. As Tapper notes, the story is underreported. And without widespread pressure, which will never happen in Big Media, they’ll continue to sweep it under the rug.

Kudos to Tapper for fighting this dishonesty with genuine zeal.

Trump: The Judge in My Fraud Case Has a Conflict of Interest Because He Is of Mexican Heritage

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:08 pm



A serial litigant, bully, and con artist who angrily denounces judges who rule against him? Where have I seen this act before?

And the Higher Power keeps turning the dial.

Trump Blatantly Lies About His Position on Japanese Nukes

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:28 pm



CNN calls this a flip-flop. No. A flip-flop is when you change your mind. This is a lie. Here, Trump denies having said Japan should get nukes, while (as the video shows) Trump said Japan should get nukes.

He’s stupid and dishonest and incompetent and embarrassing.

If you’re determined to vote for him, I’m not trying to persuade you otherwise. You’re unpersuadable. In return, perhaps you can give up trying to persuade me to vote for this trogolodyte. It will never ever ever happen, so save your breath.

So why do I blog this stuff? Because it amuses me, in a dark and depressing sort of way, to catalogue all the stuff this guy says and does . . . while watching people continue to defend him. It’s hard not to entertain the possibility that this is a giant cosmic game, where some Higher Power just wants to see exactly how ridiculous a human being can be, while still having millions of people want him to be their ruler. And the Higher Power just keeps turning the dial towards peak ridiculousness, and people keep on defending him.

That’s probably not what’s going on. But if it were . . . what would be different?

Paul Ryan Gingerly Climbs Aboard

Filed under: General — JVW @ 2:33 pm



[guest post by JVW]

Paul Ryan in his hometown newspaper, the Janesville Gazette:

. . . Sure, count us among the majority of Americans upset with the direction our country is headed. But that’s not enough. We agreed that we must focus less on what we’re against and more on what we’re for. So, long before we knew who our nominee would be, we decided we would present the country a policy agenda that offers a better way forward. We know what we believe in, so let’s bring it to the country.

[. . . ]

That’s why next week my colleagues and I will start introducing a series of policy proposals that address the American people’s top priorities. These plans are the result of months of work by House Republicans.

The concept from the start was simple: If we had a Republican president ready to sign bills into law, what would we do?

This month, we’ll show the country what a better tax code looks like. We’ll outline a plan not just for repealing Obamacare but replacing it with a better system, more focused on patients, choices and lower costs. We’ll offer a plan to restore the Constitution and the separation of powers that decades of executive overreach have eroded. We’ll present the ideal national security and foreign policy to keep Americans safe. We’ll show how we can reform rules and regulations so they’re spurring the economy and creating jobs, not destroying them. And we’ll offer a better way to help lift people out of poverty and into lives of self-determination.

It will be a positive, optimistic vision for a more confident America.

It’s short of all that’s required to save the country, but the goal was to focus on issues that unite Republicans. It’s a bold agenda but one that can bring together all wings of the Republican Party as well as appeal to most Americans.

One person who we know won’t support it is Hillary Clinton. A Clinton White House would mean four more years of liberal cronyism and a government more out for itself than the people it serves. Quite simply, she represents all that our agenda aims to fix.

To enact these ideas, we need a Republican president willing to sign them into law. That’s why, when he sealed the nomination, I could not offer my support for [the presumptive Republican nominee] before discussing policies and basic principles.

As I said from the start, my goal has been to unite the party so we can win in the fall. And if we’re going to unite, it has to be over ideas.

[The presumptive Republican nominee] and I have talked at great length about things such as the proper role of the executive and fundamental principles such as the protection of life. The list of potential Supreme Court nominees he released after our first meeting was very encouraging.

But the House policy agenda has been the main focus of our dialogue. We’ve talked about the common ground this agenda can represent. We’ve discussed how the House can be a driver of policy ideas. We’ve talked about how important these reforms are to saving our country. And we’ve talked about how, by focusing on issues that unite Republicans, we can work together to heal the fissures developed through the primary.

Through these conversations, I feel confident he would help us turn the ideas in this agenda into laws to help improve people’s lives. That’s why I’ll be voting for him this fall.

It’s no secret that he and I have our differences. I won’t pretend otherwise. And when I feel the need to, I’ll continue to speak my mind. But the reality is, on the issues that make up our agenda, we have more common ground than disagreement.

As a right-wing nutjob I think having a potential House majority in conflict with a Presidential administration is more often than not a very good thing. Even when they both are nominally of the same party.

– JVW

Donald Trump is a Giant Scumbag

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:49 am



This is going to be what finally does him in.

And if you can’t tell that the tongue is firmly planted in the cheek, you’re beyond all hope.

The story is from the recently released Trump University documents, and is a couple of days old, but better late than never:

Screen Shot 2016-06-02 at 7.45.53 AM

He really is a horrible human being. If you transposed Hillary’s background and personal characteristics to Trump, and vice-versa, you anti-Hillary people would be howling 50 times as loud about how awful Hillary is. As long as she kept the D after her name. And you would be right.

Whiny Ivy League English Majors: Don’t Make Us Read White Male Poets!

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:37 am



Reason:

Some Yale University students are demanding changes to the English Department curriculum: specifically, they don’t think it should feature so many English poets who were straight, white, wealthy, and male.

“It is your responsibility as educators to listen to student voices,” the students wrote in a petition to the faculty. “We have spoken. We are speaking. Pay attention.”

The “Major English Poets” sequence, a mandatory two-course commitment for English majors, is particularly problematic, according to the students. These classes cover Geoffrey Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, and T.S. Eliot. It’s not the most diverse line up, to be sure, but it’s the one that best reflects history the way it actually happened. Inarguably, these are the most influential poets in the English language.

Reason quotes a student petition expressing discontent with the course’s focus on these poets:

When students are made to feel so alienated that they get up and leave the room, or get up and leave the major, something is wrong. The English department loses out when talented students engaged in literary and cultural analysis are driven away from the major. Students who continue on after taking the introductory sequence are ill-prepared to take higher-level courses relating to race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, ability, or even to engage with critical theory or secondary scholarship. We ask that Major English Poets be abolished, and that the pre-1800/1900 requirements be refocused to deliberately include literatures relating to gender, race, sexuality, ableism, and ethnicity.

It’s time for the English major to decolonize — not diversify — its course offerings. A 21st century education is a diverse education: we write to you today inspired by student activism across the university, and to make sure that you know that the English department is not immune from the collective call to action.

Everyone who signed this petition is what’s wrong with this country.

I would have thought studying the works of the great poets and writers would be more important to an English major than studying “gender, race, sexuality, ableism,* and ethnicity.” Shows you what I know about an English major. (I was an English major, but that was 1990.)

I took a literature class in college in which works of black writers were heavily emphasized. (This was not advertised in the title of the course, which was a survey of American literature from a particular time period — but that was the (black female) professor’s desire.) I liked it. We read folks like Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin (whom I liked) and folks like Toni Morrison (whom I did not care for). I considered reading these works, many of which discussed the black experience in this nation, to be a mind-opening experience — and indeed, I have described James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” as one of a handful of books that have changed the way I look at the world.

I didn’t get up and walk out of the class or start a petition because I was reading authors with a different skin color and a different life experience from mine. I read and I learned.

The major English poets from before 1800 were predominantly white males. Shut up and deal with it. Read and learn.

*I had to look up “ableism.” Taking the logic of this concept to its logical extreme, a doctor’s proposal to cure a disability would be considered unacceptable bigotry — because it implies that the person’s disability is a problem to be cured.


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