Pressing Charges

From a Trump rally in Kansas City (not the one in Wichita Valerie cited):

“I hope they get put into, I hope these guys get thrown into jail. They’ll never do it again. It’ll destroy their record. They’ll have to explain to mom and dad why they have a police record, and why they can’t get a job. And you know what? I’m going to start pressing charges against these people. And then we won’t have a problem.

“And I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to ruin somebody’s life. They’re probably good kids, you know. They’re probably good kids. I don’t what to ruin people’s lives. But the only way we’re going to stop this craziness is if we press charges. Because then their lives are going to be ruined. They’re going to know their lives are going to be ruined. So I’ll just tell you folks from now on, if you do anything, we’re pressing charges, okay?”

Trump is really good at playing the crowd. He's talking the right way now -- not 'Hey, I'll pay your legal fees if you beat up a protester.' American Presidents don't invite brown shirts to engage in violence against protesters. They use official police forces.

If he can make that shift, he will be poised to run as the law-and-order candidate in the fall. It will be difficult for Clinton or Sanders to take the same tone, because the BLM movement has their number. They can't afford to stand up to this kind of anti-free-speech, lawless disruption.

You'll Get Some On You

Indiana U is hosting an interdisciplinary conference in Psychoanalysis and Analytic Philosophy. I can't think of anything worse for Analytic Philosophy, although frankly that faction of the field deserves what it courts.

A History Lesson on Hillary Clinton

Oddly enough, Clinton enjoys her strongest support among older Democrats, the ones who were around and ought to remember all this. The younger Democrats, who didn't have the opportunity to see the constant crime and deceit, are the ones who have her figured out. That's an interesting irony.

UPDATE: Salon magazine hits the Clintons hard from the left.

UPDATE: Also, this progressive blogger who remembers the history unkindly.

The Anti-Klan Rally Will Be Held At The Klan Rally

I haven't seen a uniformed member of the Ku Klux Klan anywhere in Georgia since I was a boy. However, on April 23rd there is going to be a Klan rally at Stone Mountain (which has the dubious distinction of being the place where the Klan was reborn in 1915 after its successful suppression by Federal Marshals teamed up with Beford Forrest and other former-Confederate luminaries). I know this because there is going to be an anti-Klan rally at the Klan rally, and the group organizing it is soliciting attendance.

This group is called "All Out ATL," apparently a local wing of a nationwide movement. They are, naturally, Bernie Sanders voters who speak blithely about revolution. They are better fit to keep company with the Klan than they realize, preferring direct action and street violence to suppress their political opponents and smooth the way for their agenda. They see themselves as in "solidarity" (of course) with the protesting groups that shut down the Trump rally in Chicago. The comparison would no doubt shock them, but in truth they are a lot alike. I imagine the one group has more grad students than the other, but they are both motivated by hate and a taste for suppressing their enemies with force.

The Klan is a despicable organization we ought to oppose. It is possible to do so without becoming like them.

Politics as the Jerry Springer Show

Possibly also an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

UPDATE: Drudge linked this video of Ronald Reagan's response to lawbreaking protests. It's worth watching for the short clip of him reading the riot act to the college faculty.

Bring the crowd to its feet

This looks like good exercise.

I'm Looking At You, Ash Carter

As our Secretary of Defense celebrates his decision to force all combat positions open to women in the military, I would like to present a Marine Corps recruit currently in training at Parris Island (the Land that Time Forgot). I could tell you her name, as a friend of mine worked with her while she was in the USMC's JROTC. All I'm going to tell you is that she is a young woman of spirit and dedication, and that she is exactly what the USMC is looking for right now.

Marines in the audience will notice that her belt is out of order and needs to be cut. At this stage in her career, that error on her DIs and not on her. Being a country girl, I'm sure she can shoot a rifle well. She says she wants to be a Marine to make her parents proud, and to do something important with her life. Those are both honorable, laudable goals. I think the world of this young woman and wish her well.

All the same, take a close look at what we're doing.

And now for something completely different

The amazing thing is, he barely seems to be moving his hands:

The Shutdown in Chicago

It was carefully organized, of course, but (as I heard someone remark last night) that doesn't change the fact that any other candidate could have held a rally in Chicago without drawing this reaction. For now: if this is seen to have been effective at killing the Trump candidacy, it will become a regular playbook entry for these organizations. BLM has made disrupting political rallies a standard of its tactics already, though the scale of this was larger.

Ironically, that would end up having a fascist effect on American politics even though the people behind this claim to be motivated by a fear of fascism.

He Is Very Disappointed In Us

David Frum, writing in the Atlantic, says of the President:

He admits one major mistake: not making sufficient allowances for how unreasonable other people are.

Apparently he inherited lousy allies as well as an American population that is significantly less capable than he expected.

Brokerage and floor fights

Knowing nothing of brokered conventions, and having recently discovered I can't even figure out my own state's rules for allotting delegates to candidates, I found this article by Michael Barone interesting.  He predicts that the rules will permit the party to outmaneuver Trump almost no matter how the vote comes out, that Cruz will end up with the nomination, and that we'll know the answer by June.

She Was One of Us

Hannah Arendt:

[W]hat would have become of that, had she not come to these [American] shores — who knows? It was the experience of the Republic here which decisively shaped her political thinking, tempered as it was in the fires of European tyranny and catastrophe, and forever supported by her grounding in classical thought. America taught her a way beyond the hardened alternatives of left and right from which she had escaped; and the idea of the Republic, as the realistic chance for freedom, remained dear to her even in its darkening days.

She died in her error, as I hope to myself.

Apocalyptic Modified Blues

Friday Night AMV

For Saturday night. I remember when this song was popular.

Oh, and wait for it.

She Sure -Sounds- Like a Target

FOX News is reporting that the FBI has been questioning Clinton's IT dude in such a way as to try to tie together images of then-Secretary Clinton using her electronic devices with the email server's records. The claim is that they are trying to put together voids in the email record, so they can get some sense of just what she deleted as "personal" and never turned over to State.

They are, in other words, looking at her personally. They want to know exactly what she herself was doing, and how it ties into the records they are examining.

If that's not a "target" of the investigation, it's certainly a "subject" of the investigation in the technical terminology they use. The real point of her denials of being a "target" is that she wants to say something like this:

This is just a security review! Nobody is thinking of indicting me!

If they're looking at images of her and trying to tie them to events, though, they're looking at her personally. This was never just a security review, but it might have been targeted at finding a scapegoat among her chief aides. Now it sounds like they are doing the right thing, and targeting her personally for her manifest and constant violations of national security law.

Better Late than Never

National Review endorses Ted Cruz.

I agree that Cruz is the best choice among the remaining candidates. I would rank them roughly as follows: Cruz -> Rubio -> Kaisch -> Sanders -> Trump -> Clinton. I'm not sure if Kaisch deserves to be ranked that high, but he does have gubernatorial credentials.

Religious Jokes for a Friday

It would be a good idea to have a laugh given the dreary state of American politics. How about some religious jokes from my wife's Uncle Bill in Canada?

*** Opening Joke

Recently a large seminar was held for ministers in training. Among the guests were many well-known motivational speakers.

One of these speakers boldly approached the pulpit and, gathering the entire crowds attention, said, The best years of my life were spent in the arms of a woman that wasn't my wife!

The crowd was shocked! He followed up by saying, And that woman was my mother!

The crowd burst into laughter and he gave his speech, which went over well.

About a week later one of the ministers who had attended the seminar decided to use that joke in his sermon. As he shyly approached the pulpit one sunny Sunday, he tried to rehearse the joke in his head. It seemed a bit foggy to him this morning.

Getting to the microphone he said loudly, The greatest years of my life were spent in the arms of another woman that was not my wife! His congregation sat shocked.

After standing there for almost 10 seconds trying to recall the second half of the joke, the pastor finally blurted out, …and I can't remember who she was!


*** Absolution

Edgar went to confession on Saturday and he told Father Duffy that he had an affair with a married
women from the parish. Father Duffy asked Edgar who she was and Edgar said, "Father, I can't tell you."

Father said, "If you don't tell me I cant give you absolution."

Edgar again said, "I know Father, but I just can't tell you."

Father Duffy then asked, "Was it Mrs. Murphy?"

"No, Father."

"Was it Mrs. O'Malley?"

"No, Father."

"Was it Mrs. O'Brian?"

"No, Father. I just cannot tell you who it was."

Father Duffy tells Edgar to go out and think about it and then come back when ready to confess who it was. Edgar leaves the church and runs into his friend Jim. Jim asks, "Did you tell him you had the affair?"

"Yes. He wanted to know who it was, but I wouldn't tell him."

"What did he say? Did he give you absolution?"

"Oh no, but he did give me three new possibilities........"


*** Religious Objects

A teacher asks her students what religious objects they have in their homes.

One boy answers, "We have a picture of a woman with a halo holding a baby and every day my mother kneels in front of it."

The next little boy says, "We have a brass statue of a man seated with crossed legs and a Chinese face, and every day my parents burn an incense stick before it."

Then a third boy pipes up, "In the bathroom we have a flat, square box with numbers on it. Every day my mother stands on it first thing in the morning and screams, 'OH MY GOD!!!'"

Georgia Legislature Passes Campus Carry

It is now off to the Governor for his signature.

I've had one of these licenses for decades, with a short void while I was a citizen of other states in the early 2000s. The permit requirements are fairly stringent. Most undergraduates are simply too young to apply, as you must be 21. All applicants are finger-printed and undergo both state and Federal criminal background checks. In addition, the probate court contacts Georgia's mental health facilities to make sure that they have no mental issues, and have never been in drug or alcohol rehabilitation treatment. All these checks are repeated every five years, and any serious criminal convictions -- as well as mere accusations of domestic violence, which is taken especially seriously by the Federal government -- void the license and are entered into the central tracking system to prevent the issuing of a new one.

Georgia has no firearms training requirement, which is a weakness in the law in my opinion: I think all American citizens should be trained in the use of firearms in High School as part of their militia service as citizens. Nevertheless, for the most part the state takes seriously the question of making sure that only rational adults of continually demonstrated good behavior are licensed.

The people who are likely to shoot up a campus are unlikely to prove to have a license -- nor, for that matter, are they likely to have cared whether it was legal to bring the gun in the first place.

The article does mention the recent robberies at Georgia State University, where I went to school as an undergraduate long ago. They're right that there were robberies regularly, as it is right downtown in Atlanta and classes run well into the night. Many of the students are "nontraditional," meaning they have enrolled in school later in life, and often they are working a full-time job in addition to pursuing a degree after work. These students are a very low risk for turning criminal, but they are exposed to a significant risk of robbery or assault walking back to their cars, or to the MARTA station, on what is often a lonely campus late at night.

A surprising education success story

In my high school in the 1970s, if you wanted any serious instruction, AP courses were your only option.  Nevertheless, I never sat for any AP tests; my university had no required freshman courses to place out of, and I never sensed that any prerequisite courses were likely to waste my time.  It was all I could do to keep up with a full course load at the suddenly much more challenging level that awaited me after I left public high school.  The AP high school courses nevertheless were quite good, an adequate preparation for a rigorous university, if not necessarily a substitute for freshman year.  If I had chosen to attend a state school, I might well have placed out of many freshman courses, since many of them amounted to remedial high school instruction.

This AEI article claims that AP has succeeded notably in expanding its market reach during the last decade or two, without sacrificing its quality control.  There have been reports of PC nonsense influencing the exams, but the overall rigor remains high.

Lizards in amber

This is cool.  A proto-chameleon beautifully preserved in amber pushes the estimated origins of that line back about 79 million years, leaving an extremely long fossil gap now needing to be filled with more discoveries.