You can't predict the future with certainty, so I respect that "probably." He says:
According to an Upshot analysis of Pew Research data, nearly half of white working-class Democrats think it’s more important to protect gun rights than to control gun ownership. That’s a larger percentage of Democratic voters than agree with Mr. Trump on many of the other issues that he stresses on the campaign trail.
At the same time, Mr. Trump’s position has considerable support from Republican-leaning voters. About three-quarters of Republican-leaning voters side with gun rights over gun control, according to the Pew data.
That’s even better for Mr. Trump than a lot of his other populist wedge issues, like trade and immigration. It’s about as good as any issue for Republicans — even general conservative attitudes such as whether the government is wasteful.
I listened to Hillary's post-Orlando speech yesterday, and she said a lot of things about different issues, but when she got to the part about gun control, her audience went wild. Look at the long ovation after she says "We have to make it harder for people who should not have those weapons of war. That might not stop every shooting or terrorist attack. But it will stop some and it will save lives and it will protect our first responders":
She's in the presence of people who strongly encourage her to forefront gun control, but this should not be her chosen route. If she doesn't resist the temptation to follow the encouragement of crowds like this, she is helping Donald Trump get elected.
"But I'm interpreting Trump's words, the actual text, as spoken. He said: 'Immigration is a privilege, and we should not let anyone into this country who doesn’t support our communities – all of our communities.' That is, to earn the privilege of immigration, you must support all of our communities, including the gay community. He's not limiting his exclusion to those who believe that gay people should be killed. He's saying you need to support gay people. I'm sure many religious Christians will say that he might not mean to include those of us with a love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin approach, but I don't hear that reservation in his words. I hope he is pressed on this question, and I would love to see Trump outdo Clinton in wholehearted acceptance and love for gay people and their freedom to openly love according to their heart's desire."
I said, in another update to yesterday's post about Donald Trump's anti-terrorism speech.
ADDED: And don't think I haven't anticipated comments like: Must immigrants support the pedophilia community/the bestiality community/the polygamy community?
Also: "Arbus... confessed to being jealous of her younger sister, Renee, for having been raped as a teen-ager. Diane was said to radiate 'aggressive vulnerability,' and some people were worn down by posing for her, hour upon hour, until they were frazzled and frayed; only then would she get the shot she required."
"The 22-year-old was handed a suspended sentence and fined $824 (£580). She will also be deported. Her lawyer said her drink had been spiked at a Doha hotel in March and she had woken up in a stranger's flat, where she realised she had been raped. Her alleged attacker, who said the sex was consensual, was sentenced to 100 lashes for having sex outside marriage. He will be given a further 40 lashes for consuming alcohol."
I'm watching the Trump speech first, but I'll get to this and have something to say.
ADDED: She began in a storytelling, empathetic, and vaguely religious mode, speaking of the people who died and the need for prayer. Then she transitioned to policy with Trump-like statements about the need to be strong. ["Now we have to steel our resolve and respond... We must attack [terrorism] with clear eyes, steady hands, unwavering determination and pride in our country and our values."] The policy itself seemed interesting, but her audience messed up the value of it by cheering to great excess when she got to gun control. ["I believe weapons of war have no place on our streets."] And the big question I had about all those policy ideas was: Why hasn't the Obama administration done these things and isn't she connected to those failures?
I didn't like that she called Mateen "a madman." People with mental illness can be dangerous, but what basis is there for characterizing an Islamist terrorist as a "madman" (other than to set up an argument for gun control)?
It seems to me that the terrorist has deep belief in an ideology and has decided to use violence. I think true mental illness is a disability, and those with disabilities deserve respect and care (even as we need to protect ourselves from danger).
And religious devotion is also serious and can lead people to do some very terrible things, but it is not insanity, even when the particular ideas seem foolish or evil. There's a lot of religion out there in the world, and it's just too easy to say that the kind of religion we're seeing in Islamic terrorists isn't real religion but madness.
Just as some nonreligious ideas are dangerous and evil, some religious ideas are dangerous and evil. And we can say that without inserting this extra step of pretending it's not religion but madness. That's the failure to speak clearly that Trump was talking about in his speech today. I think this blurring is done out of a fear of criticizing or alienating other Muslims. That is a choice to be unclear, to cushion the harshness, and Hillary is making that choice.
She also used disease and poison as a metaphor (as if better health care might be the answer)
The Orlando terrorist may be dead, but the virus that poisoned his mind remains very much alive.... The threat is metastasizing. We face a twisted ideology and poisoned psychology that inspires the so-called ‘lone wolves’....
But these are human beings with thinking minds who are embracing particular ideas (ideas that spur them to terrible action). Of course, ideas are "viral." We use that metaphor all the time, for good and bad ideas. But the person who comes to believe something isn't sick like someone with cancer or a fever. You can get lost inside your metaphors.
ADDED: "We need to respond to this attack on America as one united people, with force, purpose, and determination. But the current politically correct response cripples our ability to talk and to think and act clearly. We're not acting clearly. We're not talking clearly. We've got problems. If we don't get tough, and if we don't get tough, and fast, we're not going to have our country anymore. There will be nothing, absolutely nothing left."
AND: He won't say the killer's name. He also says "Afghan" as the name of the country, Afghanistan. And, oddly, he pronounced "Orlando," Or-lahn-do. [CORRECTION: Looking at the written script, I think he was saying "born an Afghan," not "born in Afghan," so it would not be a mistake. And he does also say "Orlando," with the normal pronunciation many times. His enunciation slips when he's reading a speech.]
ALSO: "We have a dysfunctional immigration system," he says after questioning why the man's father was allowed to immigrate.
PLUS: Here's the full text of the speech. I wanted to excerpt what he said about religion. Hillary, in her speech today, presented the terrorists' version of Islam as madness, mental disease, and as I said in my post above, this is disrespectful and unfair to the unfortunate people who suffer from mental illness, and it is also unrealistic about the nature of the human mind, which, even when healthy, thinks and believes all sorts of things that are not true and not nice. You're not going to somehow cure people of their bad ideas. Trump wants to exclude people who have the wrong ideas:
We cannot continue to allow thousands upon thousands of people to pour into our country, many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer. Many of the principles of Radical Islam are incompatible with Western values and institutions. Radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-American. I refuse to allow America to become a place where gay people, Christian people, and Jewish people, are the targets of persecution and intimidation by Radical Islamic preachers of hate and violence....
We have to screen applicants to know whether they are affiliated with, or support, radical groups and beliefs. We have to control the amount of future immigration into this country to prevent large pockets of radicalization from forming inside America....
[U]nder the Clinton plan, you’d be admitting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East with no system to vet them, or to prevent the radicalization of their children. The burden is on Hillary Clinton to tell us why she believes immigration from these dangerous countries should be increased without any effective system to screen who we are bringing in. The burden is on Hillary Clinton to tell us why we should admit anyone into our country who supports violence of any kind against gay and lesbian Americans....
Yes, there are many radicalized people already inside our country as a result of the poor policies of the past. But the whole point is that it will be much, much easier to deal with our current problem if we don’t keep on bringing in people who add to the problem.... This shooter in Orlando was the child of an immigrant father who supported one of the most repressive regimes on Earth. Why would we admit people who support violent hatred?
Hillary Clinton can never claim to be a friend of the gay community as long as she continues to support immigration policies that bring Islamic extremists to our country who suppress women, gays and anyone who doesn’t share their views.... Why does Hillary Clinton want to bring people here—in vast numbers—who reject our values?
Ask yourself, who is really the friend of women and the LGBT community, Donald Trump with his actions, or Hillary Clinton with her words? Clinton wants to allow Radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country—they enslave women, and murder gays. I don’t want them in our country. Immigration is a privilege, and we should not let anyone into this country who doesn’t support our communities – all of our communities.
That's some strong support for gay people! It sounds as though Catholics might have trouble meeting his standard.
MORE: In the comments, I'm seeing some questioning of my last sentence there — "It sounds as though Catholics might have trouble meeting his standard." But I'm interpreting Trump's words, the actual text, as spoken. He said: "Immigration is a privilege, and we should not let anyone into this country who doesn’t support our communities – all of our communities." That is, to earn the privilege of immigration, you must support all of our communities, including the gay community. He's not limiting his exclusion to those who believe that gay people should be killed. He's saying you need to support gay people. I'm sure many religious Christians will say that he might not mean to include those of us with a love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin approach, but I don't hear that reservation in his words. I hope he is pressed on this question, and I would love to see Trump outdo Clinton in wholehearted acceptance and love for gay people and their freedom to openly love according to their heart's desire.
Former FBI agent-turned lawyer Stuart Kaplan says... "If in fact a sympathizer gets ahold of this list and is readily able to identify you as being his neighbor and, then, decides (because they're a sympathizer) to go out and do something horrific to you, there is no way to calculate the potential or to prevent that."...
The list has not yet been made public.
How could the list have been "released" and yet not "made public"? I guess the U.S. authorities haven't independently made the list known, but that the "pro-Isis group" has put the list out there. It's a terrorist tactic just to make people think there is a list and they could be on it. Being on a list is terrifying even if nothing is ever done to you. It's a terrorist tactic to let people know that lists are being made and you could end up on it. If you knew what you were supposed to do to stay off the list, you might do it. You might completely on your own try to imagine what you could do to stay off the list. Keep a low profile. Don't talk about terrorism. Withdraw from social media. Delete your account.
"In a video posted to Facebook shortly after midnight, Seddique Mateen... called the shooting 'tragic' but said his son was 'a good son and an educated son.' He said his son shouldn’t have carried out the massacre because 'God himself will punish those involved in homosexuality.' 'I don’t know what caused him to shoot last night... No radicalism, no... He doesn’t have a beard even. . . . I don’t think religion or Islam had anything to do with this.'"
From a Washington Post article titled "Orlando gunman 'cool and calm' during nightclub standoff with police," which also deals with the question of why the police waited so long — while living victims were bleeding — to storm the building. If the answer is that the man was calm, I really don't get it. First of all, there had been so many gunshots, and people were wounded who might have been saved. Second, he identified himself as a devotee of ISIS. When have such people ever stopped in the middle of a massacre? He wasn't a madman to be talked down. He was cool and calm.
I see that the mayor of Orlando, Buddy Dyer (D), said: "We’re dealing with something we never imagined and is unimaginable." Why didn't they imagine it?! It's absolutely imaginable. It's even happened before. Is he just saying he didn't think his city would be the next one? That's absurd. Every city should imagine that it could have an incident like this. And wasn't there an imam in Orlando, speaking in public just last April, saying gay people should be killed (out of "compassion")?
Here's some very heavy-handed rhetoric — ironically against another man's heavy-handed rhetoric — that shouldn't be imposed on the captive audience of a graduating class and the guests who want to celebrate them, but I can see that he thinks it's such an emergency that the normal rules do not apply — which, again ironically, is why Donald Trump must think he's got to talk the way he does.
So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn’t seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships. I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and—they feel—powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that--as often happens on TV--a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can’t. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.
As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient Proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong. These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again--all happening at once. We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires. The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life, is eroding fast, spurred along and amplified by an amoral Internet that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.
We no longer have the luxury of neutrality or “balance,” or even of bemused disdain. Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers. In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves, so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior. Hey, he’s rich; he must be doing something right. He is not. Edward R. Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago. He is an insult to our history. Do not be deceived by his momentary “good behavior.” It is only a spoiled, misbehaving child hoping somehow to still have dessert.
Said Lin-Manuel Miranda, on winning the first of many awards for "Hamilton" at the Tonys last night.
In the ensuing poem he discussed his love for his wife, the Orlando shootings, and theater as a haven of tolerance and inclusivity — all in perfect iambic pentameter, through sobs. "The show is proof that history remembers," he said. "We live in times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall in light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer."
I was watching (and he made me cry):
What a lovely man. Never leave that wife. He must know.
(It's just by chance that this post on a man named Miranda follows my post on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court case named Miranda.)
Here's a bit about Lin-Manuel Miranda's wife, Vanessa Nadal:
1. She is an Attorney Who Graduated From Fordham... 2. Before Going to Law School, She Was a Working Scientist... 3. She and Miranda Went to High School Together, But They Didn’t Connect Until Later...
Two months later, at a big crowded party, he didn’t exactly say, “I love you” but almost. “At some point, we met up for a kiss and he said, ‘You love me,’ ” she recalled. “I was like: ‘How presumptuous!’ I was a little angry but I couldn’t deny it.”...
4. They Got Married in 2010... 5. She Gave Birth to Their First Child, Sebastian, in 2014....
Chief Justice Earl Warren, a former prosecutor, delivered the opinion of the Court, ruling that due to the coercive nature of the custodial interrogation by police (Warren cited several police training manuals which had not been provided in the arguments), no confession could be admissible under the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination clause and Sixth Amendment right to an attorney unless a suspect had been made aware of his rights and the suspect had then waived them:
The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him.
In dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote that "nothing in the letter or the spirit of the Constitution or in the precedents squares with the heavy-handed and one-sided action that is so precipitously taken by the Court in the name of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities". Harlan closed his remarks by quoting former Justice Robert H. Jackson: "This Court is forever adding new stories to the temples of constitutional law, and the temples have a way of collapsing when one story too many is added."
But Miranda was a fine added story, and the temple held up pretty well.
(That other case on the NYT front page is important too: "Dissenters Fear Widening of Congressional Power." That was Katzenbach v. Morgan.)
That's my question, as I'm trying to read the NYT article with the infuriating headline, "Omar Mateen: From Early Promise to F.B.I. Surveillance." As if the FBI's investigation skewed him from a path to a successful American life!
He earned an associate degree in criminal justice technology in 2006. A year later, he was hired by one of the world’s premier private security companies, G4S. And then, in 2009, he got married and bought a home.
As if these things might not be chosen by someone with evil plans.
Soon, though, signs of troubles emerged. His wife, an immigrant from Uzbekistan, divorced him in 2011, after he abused her.
The desire to sympathize with this man is — for some insane reason — so strong that an abused woman is made the active party. She divorced him. He experienced "troubles."
Two years after that, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was called in after reports from Mr. Mateen’s co-workers that he, the American-born son of Afghan immigrants, had suggested he may have had terrorist ties. The F.B.I. interviewed him twice, but after surveillance, records checks and witness interviews, agents were unable to verify any terrorist links and closed their investigation.
That's all very blandly put, but I want more! Why did the FBI fail? What were the reports and what other reports of other terrorist sleepers are processed bureaucratically and left to continue undisturbed until the day they decide to wake up and open fire in a crowded nightclub?
Then, in 2014, the F.B.I. discovered a possible tie between Mr. Mateen and Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who had grown up in nearby Vero Beach and then became the first American suicide bomber in Syria, where he fought with the Nusra Front, a Qaeda-aligned militant group. Again, the F.B.I. closed its inquiry after finding “minimal” contact between the two men. After the terrorist investigations cleared Mr. Mateen, he maintained both his Florida security-officer license and his job....
A second investigation! And still nothing! Again, it is amazing — maddening — to think of all the Omar Mateens out there and known to the FBI and nothing is being done to stop them.
"If Hillary Clinton, after this attack, still cannot say the two words 'Radical Islam' she should get out of this race for the Presidency. If we do not get tough and smart real fast, we are not going to have a country anymore. Because our leaders are weak, I said this was going to happen – and it is only going to get worse. I am trying to save lives and prevent the next terrorist attack. We can't afford to be politically correct anymore."
"'I can do some things on my own. I did manage to secure a spot in the Ivy League without pretending to be Native American. I hope you noticed that I’ve decorated my house in all the colors of the wind.' Warren bristles, Church Lady-style... The senator from Massachusetts stands up. 'Where’s the bathroom?' she asks. 'Can I squeeze in there with the server?' Hillary gives that big laugh that indicates she is not amused. 'No need to go on the warpath,' she says in her best Cersei manner. 'Let’s bury the hatchet — in The Donald.'"
From "Girl Squad," by Maureen Dowd at The NYT, where, naturally, the commenters are outraged. Top-rated comments include: "Dear New York Times: Why do you continue to pay this woman? She's not funny; she's not clever; and she's become a one-note channel of HillaryHate," "Dowd legitimizes Trump's slurs... by repeating them here in this 'satire,'" "Unbelievable... that Ms. Dowd has also managed to write one of the most vacuous columns I've ever read about two of the least vacuous people in Washington."
("Cersei" is a "Game of Thrones" reference. I had to look it up.)
"... and depositing it on my left. I concentrate on keeping the blade in touch with the ground. It’s a dance of sorts. The dance of the mower and the grass. Tolstoy understood the satisfactions of this work. In 'Anna Karenina,' Levin joins the peasants to harvest the hay on his estate. His brother scoffs, but Levin is soon absorbed in his labors: 'The longer Levin mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the scythe, but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and well finished of itself. These were the most blissful moments.' Working slowly and deliberately, with little noise, allows me to be part of nature, rather than striving against it...."
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