“2016 Olympians Will Be Competing In Poop Water, And The IOC Doesn't Care,” blared Deadspin in August. “Brazil Can’t Clean Up its Shit in Time for the Olympics,” observed Gawker.... Officials are still scrambling to implement emergency measures that will clean up the water venues ahead of the Games. If they make progress, the Olympic athletes may be spared stomach cramps and infections....
Although I’d place fairly long odds against this thermonuclear tactic, there’s also the possibility of piecemeal skirmishes for delegates. In South Carolina, for instance, delegates might unbind themselves on the pretext that Trump withdrew his pledge to support the Republican nominee. Remember those chaotic Nevada caucuses that Trump won? They could be the subject of a credentials challenge. There could also be disputes over the disposition of delegates from Marco Rubio and other candidates who have dropped out of the race. A final possibility is “faithless delegates,” where individual delegates simply decline to vote for Trump despite being bound to do so by party rules. It’s not clear whether this is allowed under Republican rules, but it’s also not clear what the enforcement mechanism would be.By convention time, we'll know what the margin is. If Trump has the majority, 1,237, or a bit more, there is still a game to be played. If he has only 1,237, the majority is lost if just one of those delegates flips, for any of a range of technical or political reasons. Trump has to keep wrangling his delegates, and how will he do that among these "mostly dyed-in-the-wool Republican regulars and insiders"?
The Obama administration is considering whether North Carolina’s new law on gay and transgender rights makes the state ineligible for billions of dollars in federal aid for schools, highways and housing, officials said Friday.Perhaps North Carolina feels threatened. Pushing federal policy — or the Obama administrations idea of policy that's never put in the clear text of any statute — by threatening to cut off billions is undemocratic and underhanded.
Cutting off any federal money — or even simply threatening to do so — would put major new pressure on North Carolina to repeal the law, which eliminated local protections for gay and transgender people and restricted which bathrooms transgender people can use. A loss of federal money could send the state into a budget crisis and jeopardize services that are central to daily life....But it would be taken to court, and under existing precedent, it would lose. The conditions the states accept when they take grants need to have been clearly stated by the federal government. The states are entitled to know what they are binding themselves to as they take the money. The requirement that a choice-of-gender principle must apply to the sex-segregation of bathrooms isn't something that was understood when North Carolina accepted the grants that the Obama administration is considering taking away.
Federal agencies have used the threat of lost money to pressure a handful of municipal governments in California and Illinois to change their policies and allow transgender students to use the restrooms of the gender they identify with....
Dan Forest, the Republican lieutenant governor and the president of the State Senate... is correct that federal anti-discrimination laws do not explicitly mention gay and transgender people: the Obama administration has repeatedly called on Congress to pass a law banning discrimination against them in employment decisions....
The Obama administration would not need to go to court to withhold grant money....
[O]ur cases have recognized limits on Congress’s power under the Spending Clause to secure state compliance with federal objectives. “We have repeatedly characterized . . . Spending Clause legislation as ‘much in the nature of a contract.’ ”.... The legitimacy of Congress’s exercise of the spending power “thus rests on whether the State voluntarily and knowingly accepts the terms of the ‘contract.’ ”(The position taken by Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito cuts even more strongly in favor of the states.)
9:03 — Gary Johnson uses his opening statement to talk about his "wonderful family," including his grandchildren and his fiance, with whom he shares "a passion for health and wellness." "It's great to be in love, and I'm in love!" He talks about starting a successful "handyman business," then selling it in 1999 — "nobody lost their job." He also points out that he got elected governor in a state that's 2 to 1 Democratic, New Mexico. And he's adventurous: "I climbed the tallest mountain in each of the seven continents!"Funny that 2 of them were so personal and one was so abstract. It's the excessive abstraction that scares me about libertarians, so maybe I should be wary of McAfee, even though I loved his quote and immediately chose it for the post title.
9:05 — John McAfee's opening statement strikes a different tone — philosophical, not personal: "Libertarianism is grounded in the concept of liberty. What is liberty? Liberty is the idea that our minds and bodies belong to ourselves. . . . Liberty cannot be extinguished . . . through laws; it can only be unjustly punished."
9:06 — Austin Petersen sketches his biography to highlight how he's learned the value of liberty. He grew up on a horse farm near a town called Liberty, Missouri. He learned about "economic liberty" as a kid, when his parents sent him to sell chrysanthemums. He learned about "personal liberty" from "the Golden Rule." "I may be the youngest candidate in this race, but I'm the oldest in libertarian years!"
9:38 — McAfee is asked about his shady alleged activities in Belize and Guatemala. "You're still technically a fugitive!" He was also arrested for driving on Xanax. McAfee says . . . well, he's never been charged with murder! (That's reassuring.) He admits his DUI was "the stupidest thing I've ever done."I like this Peterson-Johnson engagement with the iconic issue of our day, forced cake decoration:
9:42 — Petersen challenges Johnson on his support for requiring bakeries to make cakes for same-sex weddings. "Should a Jewish baker be forced to bake a Nazi wedding cake?" Johnson says: "Yes!" Petersen accuses Johnson of not understanding the free market. Petersen frames his argument as pro-gay: "Let the bigots out themselves!"That's 2 damned different forms of libertarian. The libertarian position should be Petersen's, don't you think? Petersen is only 35, by the way. Asked about it, he said, "I'm 35, so I'm constitutionally eligible.... Don't hate me because I'm young and pretty!"
Here’s why scientists think it works: When someone takes a psychedelic, there is a decrease in blood flow and electrical activity in the brain’s “default mode network,” a group of brain structures found in the frontal and pre-frontal cortex. The default mode network is primarily responsible for our ego or sense of self; it “lights up” when we daydream or self-reflect.Note the quick jump from "mystical experience" to "therapeutic outcomes." Disrespect for religion is an undercurrent to this discussion, which assumes the legal use would entail the assistance of medical professionals. The article quotes drug-policy expert Mark Kleiman, who "emphasizes the importance of containing the experience, both during the trip, for the purposes of safety, and afterward, 'so it’s not merely a one-off mystical experience, but actually something you could build a life around.'"
When we trip, our default mode network slows down. With the ego out of commission, the boundaries between self and world, subject and object dissolve. These processes may be related to something called the “primary mystical experience,” a phenomena highly correlated with therapeutic outcomes. As Matthew Johnson, a principal investigator in Johns Hopkins’s psilocybin studies, explains, these experiences include a “transcendence of time and space,” a sense of unity and sacredness and a deeply felt positive mood.
[Moore described the man who got punched in the face] as using “very animated hand gestures” during the verbal altercation and emphasized the closeness of people of the crowd. “These are pretty close quarters,” he said. “These are emotional times and the brushing up or pushing against someone is probably occurring all over in that crowd.”
Moore said [the man] did not wish to pursue assault charges against the girl, but police have referred the girl to juvenile authorities on a tentative disorderly conduct charge....
If anti-abortion advocates sincerely believe abortion is murder, they should also say that women have to be punished for it. If a fetus is the same as a 5-year-old, then a woman who ends a pregnancy should be just as guilty of murder as a woman who pays a hit man to kill her kindergartener. Claiming ignorance that murder was murder wouldn’t work.Yeah, down that road you'd have to punish the woman, but the whole point is, political disaster lies down that road, and what Jill Filipovic wants is for you to run all the way back down Abortion-Is-Murder Road and go somewhere else entirely — where you see that this whole territory lies inside the body of another person and she gets full control over what happens inside there.
It’s an ugly thought, and it’s electorally and socially unpopular, and that’s why some of them don’t say it out loud; others realize that while they may find abortion morally wrong, they don’t in their heart of hearts believe removing an embryo from a woman’s body is the same as slaughtering a 5-year-old. But start making those kinds of distinctions and the whole case against abortion falls apart.
Do we really need penalties for every law?... [W]e all might be better off if our government always took the side of maximizing human life while leaving room for private citizens to make tough choices as needed. A law without penalties does that.....Adams wants to make abortion illegal, but then provide no enforcement mechanism. This is similar to having a law that's just not enforced, except the commitment to do no enforcing is locked down in the text of the statute. It's just an expressive law, the people saying "we care," but we're not going to do anything about it, because private citizens need room to govern their own private lives.
Governments should always favor human life, even in the gray areas. But human beings often need the freedom to make hard choices about life. If the government makes abortion and doctor-assisted dying illegal, it sends a message about the priorities of government to protect life. But by being silent on penalties for those things, government would also allow citizens and their doctors to make the hard decisions.
Wisconsin has been in continuous political warfare for six years. Over that time, Republicans lived through Gov. Scott Walker’s epic battle for his Act 10 public-sector bargaining reform; judicial races; a Senate recall effort; a gubernatorial recall effort; a political assault in a vicious John Doe probe; another election cycle; campaign-finance reform; an overhaul of the state’s ethics body; a right-to-work law; and prevailing-wage reform. To name a few.Cruz (and his people) seem to do much better at grasping complexity and dealing with it. I have no reason to believe either Trump or Cruz cares much about Wisconsin other than as just one more state to appease and gratify, but the 2 men are revealing quite a lot about their mental capacity and competence. To govern, you have to maintain your stamina and attention to all sorts of elaborate problems that are not intrinsically emotionally rewarding, like caring about Wisconsin.
The state is also proudly home to the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, and a governor (Scott Walker) who ran for his party's presidential nomination. The result is a conservative electorate that is highly informed, highly energized and highly involved. The fights so far have given voters an acute appreciation of the conservative principles at stake, and a pride in defeating union and liberal priorities. They have radar sensitive to “fake” Republicans, and many aren’t keen on what they are hearing from Mr. Trump.
Wisconsin’s recent political battles also resulted in a dramatic shift in the state’s communications culture.... Four “talkers” in particular— Charlie Sykes, Vicki McKenna, Jerry Bader and Mark Belling—exercise enormous influence, and cover nearly every inch of the state media market....
Mr. Trump stumbled onto three of the four biggest shows on Monday, seemingly unaware that all the hosts are part of the “Never Trump” movement. Mr. Sykes likened Mr. Trump to a “12-year-old bully” and insisted he was no conservative. Ms. McKenna was similarly rough, though Mr. Trump did himself no favors by hanging up on her.
He’s also won no votes by lambasting both Mr. Walker and Paul Ryan. Mr. Trump might have been looking at Mr. Walker’s statewide approval numbers (in the 40s) and figured that hitting Mr. Walker’s tax cuts was smart politics. But the governor’s approval with Republicans is significantly higher—likely in the 70% to 80% range.
Mr. Ryan also is widely liked and admired among Republicans in the state, in particular because he still actively engages in state battles. He regularly goes on talk radio; he has openly supported Walker reforms; he helps out state legislative candidates. Mr. Cruz, by contrast to Mr. Trump, clearly was well briefed on the broader environment. His praise of Messrs. Walker and Ryan earns him strong applause at events, and he’s grasped the power of the state radio....
When the discussion turned to the wrangling of delegates to the party’s nominating convention in Cleveland this July — an issue that has dogged Mr. Trump and his skeletal campaign organization for months — Mr. Priebus explained that states all had different rules governing how they were selected.Trump has been using his "businessman" template for everything. He presents himself as a businessman with a lifetime's worth of skill and savvy, and he offers to plug BUSINESSMAN into the role of President. He's got an awful lot of confidence that this will be a wonderful experience for us, that it will make America great again. But it looks as though the businessman had not yet noticed that the fight for delegates extends beyond the primary/caucus day and requires campaign people on the ground who know the local rules and how to play the game. Mr. Trump turned to his aides and suggested that they had not been doing what they needed to do....
... Mr. Trump mentioned Louisiana, where he won the primary, but where Senator Ted Cruz is likely to come away with more delegates after exploiting peculiarities in the state’s system, according to those briefed on the meeting....
But when Mr. Priebus explained that each campaign needed to be prepared to fight for delegates at each state’s convention, Mr. Trump turned to his aides and suggested that they had not been doing what they needed to do....
George Mason renaming its law school The Antonin Scalia School of Law. The late Justice, a genuinely beloved teacher, must be on cloud nine!— Nina Totenberg (@NinaTotenberg) March 31, 2016
Christiane Wirtz, a spokeswoman for Ms. Merkel, confirmed that the German ambassador to Ankara, Martin Erdmann, had been summoned on March 22 over the video.... German officials would not confirm reports that the Turkish side had requested that the video be taken down from the Internet.
But [Sawsan Chebli, a spokeswoman for Germany’s Foreign Ministr] said the ambassador and a deputy foreign minister, who called his Turkish counterpart on Tuesday, had “made clear that political satire in Germany is, of course, protected and therefore there is neither a necessity, nor a possibility, for the government to take action.”
The show’s reaction to the dispute was tongue-in-cheek. It posted a political cartoon showing a figure resembling Mr. Erdogan brandishing a fire extinguisher at a laptop, while threatening, “Either you erase this video, or I will extinguish the Internet.”
[Y]ou might claim that the museum would in fact benefit the community as a whole, since more and more people would come to enjoy art they’d previously had no exposure to, or found repugnant.
But suppose in fact people would not come to enjoy the art, and on the whole there would be a higher level of unhappiness because of the museum. Why should your vote be determined by what a bunch of philistines would think? It might seem that I could rightly vote for my own self-interest when I have good reason to think that others should share that interest, even if I know they won’t.
Adrienne Corri initially declined the role of Mrs. Alexander because Kubrick was getting applicants to de-bra in his office while he trained a video camera on them. She made it clear that wasn’t on. “But Adrienne, suppose we don’t like the tits?” “Tough.”And:
Little was accomplished during the first two days of shooting [the rape scene with Corri], but on the third day, Kubrick blocked out a portion of the action with McDowell, instructing him to knock [the actor Patrick] Magee to the floor and begin kicking his guts out. The director then suddenly asked McDowell, "Can you sing?" It was suggested that the actor could improvise a song-and-dance number while administering the savage beating. McDowell confessed that "Singin’ in the Rain" was the only tune he knew by heart. This resulted in what Kubrick calls the CRM, or "critical rehearsal moment," during which the director and actors come together to create a defining scene. Kubrick immediately looked into obtaining the rights to the song, and discovered that the fee was $10,000 to use it for 30 seconds. Once the rights were in hand, shooting proceeded immediately. Kubrick later invited Stanley Donen, the director of the musical classic, to view his scene and then asked Donen’s personal permission to use the song for the sequence. "He wanted to make sure I wasn’t offended," Donen reports in the biography Dancing on the Ceiling. "Why would I be? It didn’t affect the movie Singin’ in the Rain." Gene Kelly, who had performed the famous number in the 1952 film, felt otherwise. When Kelly and Kubrick met at an awards ceremony following Clockwork’s release, the danceman refused to talk to the director.
Christian Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina started tattooing, especially of children, for perceived protection against forced conversion to Islam during the Ottoman occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.... This form of tattooing continued long past its original motivation. Tattooing was performed during springtime or during special religious celebrations such as the Feast of St. Joseph, and consisted mostly of Christian crosses on hands, fingers, forearms, and below the neck and on the chest. In India many Christians tattoos Cross Sign under thumb area. Orthodox Coptic Christians who live in Egypt commonly tattoo themselves with the symbols of Coptic crosses on their right wrists, the history of this custom is similar to that of the Christian Croat tatto[o]s....I have no idea if this woman — her name is Ashley Weir — had any religious notions about what she was doing. Only 2 of the 3 tattoos had a cross. So let me pose a hypothetical. What if 3 children received cross tattoos that the Christian mother believed were needed as protection from forced conversion to Islam?
At the height of the cult, mothers took to tattooing their children at home, usually before they were ten years old. The tattooing process involves using a crude needle and a special solution made of charcoal, grime, honey, and milk extracted from the bosom of a lactating woman who has already had a male child....Special power was ascribed to this milk.
Although the cult outlasted the Ottoman oppressors, communist authorities made tattooed women targets of hate campaigns. Threatened and treated like criminals, they would often lose their jobs due to their religious allegiances. Eventually women stopped tattooing their children out of fear and the practice was more or less extinct by the 1950s.What would you do with an American mother who belonged to a cult like this and followed the traditional practice? What would you do with an American mother, a Christian, who heard about this practice and adopted it as part of a custody battle with her ex-husband, a Muslim?
... "There was a paraffin lamp," [one woman remembered], "milk was taken from the woman who feeds a male child and it was mixed with the soot from the lamp. Then she took the needle, dipped it, and tattooed a cross on my hands until the blood ran. My hand was numb so I didn't feel anything. She wrapped it and I held it like that for one day without washing."
If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.The woman is a victim of her own decision? How does that respect the autonomy and full personhood of the woman? Those who want to ban abortion should take responsibility for what they are really saying about women, that women should be denied a choice they want to make. Unless you think the denial is based on women's inability to think for themselves and ascertain what's right and wrong and define the meaning of life for themselves, then you should hold women responsible for choosing to do something that you think the majority has the power to forbid and you want to forbid. If you think women are incapable of thinking for themselves, say that outright. It would take political courage. If you think women are capable and would be choosing to do something that is properly forbidden, then admit that they deserve punishment. Ah, but that too would take political courage.
Many people have apartments with the space/ capacity to house another person but choose not to because there isn't an attractive way to do so. Temporary partitions offer poor privacy, especially in terms of sound. They also tend to ruin whatever room they're in - you're less likely to use your living room if it doubles as a bedroom.... pod people... hmmm.
I think pods can provide a needed fix here. Yes the living room housing my pod is smaller - but it's by no means ruined. If pods can provide an attractive way to add a bedroom to an apartment, I think they could help a lot of people out. People with the extra space wanting to bring in more money by subletting, people looking for cheap and simple housing, or people wanting to add another bedroom so their friend can move in could all benefit.
What this all comes back to, though, is making a pod people would be willing to live in....
The rule, drafted and imposed by forces loyal to Mitt Romney, requires that any candidate eligible for the nomination win a majority of delegates from at least eight states or U.S. territories. Kasich is unlikely to approach that threshold ahead of the convention.If forces loyal to Romney could adopt a rule that serves their interests in 2012, why can't a new rule be made in 2016? Doesn't it simply depend on who has the votes to make the rules? I can see why Cruz wants to set himself up as the only alternative to Trump if Trump can't get a majority of delegates, but why should the convention be left with only Cruz as the fall back? And won't Cruz change his argument if it turns out that he can't get a majority in 8 states? So far, he only has 5.
Donald Trump arrived in Wisconsin Tuesday and made it abundantly clear that he’s running against Scott Walker in this state’s looming presidential primary, saying Wisconsin “is doing very poorly,” is “losing jobs all over the place” and is mired in “vitriol” over the governor.Is Cruz putting effort into defending what Walker has done? And is Walker really a big Cruz supporter?
In a recent interview, Walker said he knew both Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich well, and said both are “perfectly fine.” But he indicated that the delegate math simply doesn’t work out for Kasich: “If you’re just looking at the numbers objectively,” Walker said last week, “Senator Cruz is the only one who’s got a chance, other than Donald Trump, to win the nomination. My friend Governor Kasich cannot.” Walker indicated in the WTMJ interview that Cruz could handily take on Hillary Clinton in the general election as well.Kasich has the distinction of representing neither the pro- or the anti-Walker side. And he's the last moderate standing on the GOP side.
[Cory] Goldstein says this confrontation started on campus quad when the unidentified woman went to hand him a flyer but pulled it back and said “sorry we don’t want people with your hair here.”...It's interesting that this video went viral the same day that Trump's campaign manager got charged with battery for touching a female reporter who was touching Donald Trump. Goldstein is lucky this is on video. At around 0:30, the woman says something about Goldstein touching her, when clearly she is the one making the physical contact.
[The woman] tells him in the video that he is appropriating her culture and when he tries to walk away she obstructs his path.
“Yo, stop touching me right now,” Goldstein says he tries to walk up the stairs. She then grabs his arm to keep him from leaving. “I don’t need your disrespect,” Goldstein says as she releases her grip on him and he walks away. Goldstein understands she and her friend were trying to explain why his hair was a form of “cultural appropriation” but he says her approach was not done in a positive way....
Six protesters were arrested and could face trespassing, disorderly conduct and obstructing an officer charges after dozens initially entered the Holiday Inn Express on Monday evening as part of an anti-Donald Trump protest.Trump is speaking at the hotel at 4 p.m. today, and the protesters attempted to occupy the place at 6:30 p.m. last night. It seems as though part of the "professional" tactic is to intimidate any private business that might want to rent a venue to the Trump campaign.
Janesville Police Sgt. Mike Blaser said police gave the protesters several opportunities to move out of the building without being arrested but they refused. “I think tonight is just an indication in a smaller scale of what we might see tomorrow,” Blaser said. “We've been planning for several days and we will have assets on the ground to help us manage whatever size crowd we do get here tomorrow.”...
The six protesters arrested would not identify themselves to police before booking, Blaser said. They had joined hands inside of PVC piping and may have also been handcuffed inside the piping, he said.
The protesters used “professional” tactics, including having their own medic on scene, he said. They were members of the Showing Up for Racial Justice and Groundwork Madison groups. The protesters entered the building at 6:30 p.m. Rock County sheriff's deputies were helping Janesville police separate them at about 9:30 p.m.
Melissa Sargent, a Democratic representative to the state Assembly from the Madison area, was among those inside. “We're here to call on the Holiday Inn to take a stand against hate,” Sargent said....All the violence is on the other side. The protesters cite death threats they've received and predict some Hitler-like future, so strong tactics are justified.
Kristen Brock-Petroshius of Madison, a member of Standing Up for Racial Justice, said the group has been working with the local organizers of the anti-Trump demonstration, set for Tuesday outside the Janesville Conference Center, a part of the hotel. Brock-Petroshius said local organizers have received death threats, and Monday's protest was an effort to avoid any bloodshed that might be caused by Trump supporters....
“A lot of us think, … if this was the beginning of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, how many of us would sit by the sidelines and do nothing?” Brock-Petroshius said. 'If we can prevent the violence he is inciting from taking hold and become stronger in these coming months, then we've done our job.”
The owners of the Holiday Inn Express and Janesville Conference Center do not plan to cancel Trump's appearance Tuesday, as some protesters have called for.There's no
Love will win / no room for hate -> proud to stand against Trump in #WIsconsin pic.twitter.com/ENEWJXSpND— Rep. Melissa Sargent (@RepSargent) March 29, 2016
Limbaugh takes pains to preserve neutrality between Trump and Ted Cruz, whom he describes as the obvious choice “if conservatism is the dominating factor in how you vote.”That's in stark contrast to our local talk radio people who are overtly anti-Trump. So what's Gerson's problem?
But Limbaugh has also consistently defended Trump as a legitimate choice for those whose dominating factor is the humiliation of “the establishment.”... Trump’s deviations from conservative orthodoxy are noted but considered secondary. “I think with the case of Trump,” argues Limbaugh, “there’s a much bigger upside than downside.”Gerson argues that the GOP "establishment" — he always puts it in scare quotes — actually is conservative, conservative within "the constraints of our constitutional system" (as opposed to some "fantasy world") and within norms of "civility, inclusion and tolerance" (as opposed to "casual misogyny, racial stereotyping and religious bigotry"). And Trump is not a real conservative, Gerson says, because he "does not reason from first principles" and he appeals to "authoritarian populism" instead of — as Russell Kirk puts it — "an enduring moral order, political prudence, and restraints on power and human passion."
The upside, in this view, is not just taking the political fight to liberalism; it is also overturning a failed and corrupt Republican political order. Limbaugh dismisses defenders of this order as fundamentally self-interested. “[Trump] has put together a coalition that’s exactly what the Republican Party says that it needs to win, and yet, look what they’re doing. They’re trying to get Trump out of the race, because they’re not in charge of it.” Opposing Trump is the work of a “cliquish, elitist club,” preserving its influence and employment prospects. This criticism is sometimes expanded to include the conservative intelligentsia. “I’m talking about the establishment,” says Limbaugh, “conservative media, the brainiacs, the think tanks, the professors.”
[Walker] didn't name Trump when he left the presidential race, but made clear then that he didn't want him as the nominee. He said at the time he was "helping to clear the field" and hoped others would do the same "so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive conservative alternative to the current front-runner."
Last summer, Trump attacked Walker, saying "Wisconsin is doing terribly" under him, citing problems with the state budget. Nonetheless, Walker said during his presidential run that he would support the eventual nominee.....
The campaign to declare political opponents mentally sick and to commit dissenters to mental hospitals began in the late 1950s and early 1960s. As Vladimir Bukovsky commented on the emergence of the political abuse of psychiatry, Nikita Khrushchev reckoned that it was impossible for people in a socialist society to have an anti-socialist consciousness. Whenever manifestations of dissidence could not be justified as a provocation of world imperialism or a legacy of the past, they were self-evidently the product of mental disease. In a speech published in the Pravda daily newspaper on 24 May 1959, Khrushchev said:It seems to me that we've already gone too far toward thinking of other people's ideas and beliefs as mental illness. And I'm saying that even though I believe much more than most people that our embrace of political, social, and religious beliefs is a deeply emotional process. I don't think you should have much faith in this thing you call reason. Emotional needs must be met. But you need to examine what emotional needs of yours you are indulging when you feel the pull to call other people mentally ill.
A crime is a deviation from generally recognized standards of behavior frequently caused by mental disorder. Can there be diseases, nervous disorders among certain people in a Communist society? Evidently yes. If that is so, then there will also be offences, which are characteristic of people with abnormal minds. Of those who might start calling for opposition to Communism on this basis, we can say that clearly their mental state is not normal.The now available evidence supports the conclusion that the system of political abuse of psychiatry was carefully designed by the KGB to rid the USSR of undesirable elements....
“Look, if you’re going tobe the presidential candidate, you have to find a way to unify a whole bunch of people right now who are at each others’ throats,” McKenna told Trump. “And we feel it viscerally here because we went through the (protest) occupation in 2011 and a recall election in 2012. That’s the landscape you’re facing here when you’ve got Republicans acting like ‘recallers’ to other Republicans.”Does Trump have the focus to understand Wisconsin? The linked article is by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Craig Gilbert, who stresses "[t]he stand-alone nature of Wisconsin’s primary, where the national spotlight, more than a week of on-the-ground campaigning, a statewide anti-Trump ad blitz and a politically engaged, high-turnout electorate make for a volatile environment" and the "Upper Midwest culture where Trump’s flamboyant style of personal combat isn’t easily embraced."
If the front-runner can prevail in those conditions, it would be a huge blow to the “Stop Trump” movement. But if Trump loses, opponents will crow about his failure to win the kind of white, blue-collar “Rust Belt” state he claims he can wrest from the Democrats in November.
Sure, it’s possible the GOP front-runner will implode, just as it’s possible all those polls showing Mrs. Clinton with a double-digit lead over Mr. Trump will indeed come to pass. But some of us who never thought he would get this far are a little more reluctant to be so categorical about an election that is still seven months away.A little more reluctant? To be so categorical? You should be completely over your categoricality.
Beginning in 2011, Mr. Combs recruited Mr. Perry to bring his educational model to Harlem, provided office space and quietly rallied support in the community, [the founder of the Hartford school, Steve] Perry said.... "I think that there’s a lot to be found in the fact that you have someone such as Combs, who is highly visible within our community, who has decided that his major push is going to be with our model and in education"...
She insisted on using her personal BlackBerry for all her email communications, but she wasn’t allowed to take the device into her seventh-floor suite of offices, a secure space known as Mahogany Row.... Her aides and senior officials pushed to find a way to enable her to use the device in the secure area. But their efforts unsettled the diplomatic security bureau, which was worried that foreign intelligence services could hack her BlackBerry and transform it into a listening device....
“The issue here is one of personal comfort,” one of the participants in [a meeting of security, intelligence and technology specialists], Donald Reid, the department’s senior coordinator for security infrastructure, wrote afterward in an email that described Clinton’s inner circle of advisers as “dedicated [BlackBerry] addicts.”
It favors vulnerable children and animals, and discriminates against unattractive people. You’re more likely to sympathize with someone in your social group rather than an outsider, especially one who looks different...
[E]mpathy can be manipulated to inspire aggression.... “If I want to do terrible things to a group, one tried-and-true way is to arouse empathy for victims of that group,” Dr. Bloom said in an interview. “Often the argument for war is rooted in empathy for victims of the enemy.... Sob stories are not a good way to make public policy... The best leaders have a certain enlightened aloofness. They recognize the suffering of victims of terrorists, but they also recognize that going to war will create future victims. They make policy by taking into account numbers and cost-benefit analyses. They use rational means to achieve good ends.”
KARL: OK. Now, you're getting closer and closer to getting the delegates you need to clinch the nomination. But look at what happened in Louisiana. You won the state of Louisiana. But it looks like Ted Cruz is coming out of there with more delegates, maybe as many as 10 more delegates. And he's getting them on the key committees that will write the rules for the Republican convention. Is Ted Cruz trying to steal this nomination from you?So the Cruz campaign is hard at work on some tactics that Trump will be characterizing as not merely too dirty to be used but further evidence that Cruz is a liar.
TRUMP: Well, it tells you what a crooked system we have and what a rotten political system we have. And frankly, I'm so -- I'm millions of votes more than -- I have millions of votes more than "Lying Ted." I have millions -- millions of votes more. I have many, many delegates more. I've won areas. And he's trying to steal things because that's the way Ted works, OK. Uh, the system is a broken system. The Republican tabulation system is a broken system. It's not fair. I have so many millions of votes more. I've brought people into this party by the millions. You understand that. They voted by the millions more. It's one of the biggest stories in all of politics. And what do I have? I have a guy going around trying to steal people's delegates. This is supposed to be America, a free America. This is supposed to be a system of votes where you go out, you have elections, free elections, not elections where I won. I won Louisiana and now I hear he's trying to steal delegates. You know, welcome to, uh, the Republican Party. What's going on in the Republican Party is a disgrace. I have so many more votes and so many more delegates. And, frankly, whoever at the end, whoever has the most votes and the most delegates should be the nominee.
(1) When speaking about Islamic terrorists, it's considered appropriate to adopt this understanding tone — not that we're excusing the acts, but that we recognize that terrorism comes from being oppressed and disenfranchised, that people turn to terrorism as a last resort, etc. (I don't necessarily agree with those statements, but I've heard them countless times, from people who seem to feel very strongly about it.)
(2) We're told that the word "terrorist" is used too selectively, and especially that we should be more willing to apply it to white men and Christian men (e.g. the KKK, mass shooters, and those people who occupied the Oregon wildlife refuge).
Well, wait a minute... how oppressed and disenfranchised are white, Christian men?Trump's success has been attributed to the existence of those oppressed, disenfranchised, white, Christian men. They're not at their last resort — terrorism — if they can get their champion elected President. Maybe those "same people" John is talking about — those people who believe this theory of the cause of terrorism — should be heartened at the prospect of Trump winning: It may save us from domestic terrorism.
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."He imagined these people pathetically holding onto abstractions of power to soothe themselves in their weakness, not getting up the gumption to do anything. He was showing and trying to stir up empathy. He was not alarming his audience — rich people in San Francisco — about the potential for domestic terrorism.
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