"While driving through Arkansas, Guillermo Espinoza, a construction worker, had nearly $20,000 taken from him by a state trooper. The trooper found no drugs, no paraphernalia and no evidence of drug dealing. Espinoza was never charged with a crime. The case against him was so weak that the local prosecutor ordered it returned. That is, until a judge rather incredibly overruled the prosecutor. A state appeals court then declined to reverse the judge, apparently because Espinoza missed a deadline."
Wow...
This is the first forfeiture case I’ve seen in which a judge prevented a prosecutor from returning someone’s property.
an open-source neural network framework implemented in TensorFlow that provides a foundation for Natural Language Understanding (NLU) systems. Our release includes all the code needed to train new SyntaxNet models on your own data, as well as Parsey McParseface, an English parser that we have trained for you and that you can use to analyze English text.
I'll have more to say later about the framework, the English parser, and its results.
Perhaps the good people at Google meant their choice as a comment on this anti-democratic action. Or maybe they were just responding to the same memetic currents as the participants in the "Name Our Ship" poll.
But what interests me is when, where, and how the pattern Xy McXface emerged. I don't have time this morning to look into it, so I'm appealing to our readers to supply the answer.
Update #2 — It's worth noting that the OED gives sense 2.f. of face:
With preceding nouns and adjectives designating types of faces; also applied to people regarded as having such faces (sometimes as terms of endearment, abuse, etc.): angel, baby, brass-, doll's, fat-, funny-, hatchet-face, etc.; (with the names of animals) dog's, fish-, frog-, hog's, kitten, monkey face, etc. Sometimes informally designating medical (esp. skin) conditions, as copper-, fiery-, frog-, moon-face, etc.; occasionally characterized by a day or month, as February, Friday-face.
George Zimmerman, the self-appointed neighborhood watchman who killed Trayvon Martin in 2013, continues to find new ways to maintain his title as the worst person in the U.S. This time, he’s selling the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin. From Fox 35:
The 9mm pistol that Zimmerman said was used to shoot and kill Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012 is up for sale in an online auction. FOX 35 spoke to Zimmerman about the weapon and its sale. "I recently received it back from the Department of Justice. They took it after my trial, after I was exonerated," he said.
We reached out to Trayvon Martin's family attorney for comment. While they didn't want to talk about Zimmerman, they gave us a statement which reads, "The Trayvon Martin Foundation is committed to its mission of ending senseless gun violence in the United States. This election season, we are laser focused on furthering that mission. As such, the foundation has no comment on the actions of that person."
But Zimmerman told Fox 35 that “legally, nothing stopped me nor stops me currently from owning or possessing a fire arm.” Fox 35 reporter Valerie Boey said on Twitter that he told her he would “use the proceeds to fight against Hillary Clinton and State Attorney Angela Corey,” who prosecuted him unsuccessfully in 2013
Last year he sold Confederate flag-themed paintings and split the proceeds with a gun store owner in Florida who declared his store a “Muslim-free zone.”
Whether they’re confirming Will Ferrell rumors or inadvertently becoming street art in Chicago, billboards have been in the news lately, proving that people most certainly look up from their smartphones, occasionally. Recently, one eagle-eyed Imgur user noticed a seductive, sky-high advertisement that’s sure to have Seinfeld fans rubbernecking along the highways.
The “Timeless Art Of Savings” billboard, which presents a titillating tableau from season eight’s fifth episode “The Package,” is for the Oklahoma-based Floor Trader Outlet, who hired Insight Creative Group to come up with a creative outdoor ad. The agency apparently has some Seinfeld fans, including its COO, Bart Brewer, who posed as a stand-in for George Costanza, the Art Vandelay of seduction. Brewer didn’t actually strip down, but he did lounge over the rolls of carpet that took the place of Kramer’s velvet chair. There’s no word on what effect the billboard ...
Last autumn, Scott McLellan, a retiree in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, saw a Facebook post by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency, who declared, “By self-funding my campaign, I am not controlled by my donors, special interests or lobbyists. I am only working for the people of the U.S.!”
More than 300,000 people “liked” the post.
Trump’s pledge certainly stirred something in McClellan, who responded with a comment. Other politicians solicit money from special interests and lobbyists and are then controlled by them, he wrote, putting the country in “dire straits.” Whereas Trump would only take small contributions from regular Americans. “I sent $25 even though I am retired and on a fixed income with a strict budget,” he explained. “I am gladly and proudly sending him $25 each month until he is POTUS!!”
This week, Trump betrayed McClellan.
The candidate “took steps to appropriate much of the Republican National Committee’s financial and political infrastructure for his presidential campaign,” the New York Timesreports. Having spent around $40 million on the primaries, Trump, who claims to be worth as much as $10 billion, insists that “he may need as much as $1.5 billion for the fall campaign, but that he will seek to raise it from donors.”
* * *
That same autumn day, Jim Haskins, another Facebook commenter, lauded Trump’s independence. “Every other candidate will have to take big donors money, then they will be bought and paid for. Right now Hillary is owned by Soros, and Sanders is owned by the Unions,” he wrote. “That is why I'll only vote for Trump.”
Just two months ago, The Facebook group USA Patriots for Donald Trump posted this:
Said Kathy Dixon, a commenter on that post, “Soros has met a leader, Donald Trump, the leader for we the people, whom he will never own. Trump is not for sale.” Missouri resident Linda Isgrig wrote, “He is the evil of this whole world. What he does should be totally illegal.” Linda Hall-Cassel, another Soros critic, wrote, “We need to spread the word every chance we get, and make sure to include those associated with him.”
Last week, after Ted Cruz dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination––Trump once said of Cruz, “Goldman Sachs owns him. Remember that, folks: They own him."––Trump put Steven Mnuchin in charge of soliciting campaign funds from big-money donors. Who is he? “In 2003, the new finance director started a hedge fund with $1 billion from George Soros, the liberal New York financier who has spent more than $13 million to support Hillary Clinton and other Democrats,” Bloomberg Politicsreports. Before that, Mnuchin “spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., working his way up to partner and becoming head of the mortgage department before joining Hank Paulson in the executive suite.”
Prior to hiring the former hedge-fund manager, Trump told an interviewer on CBS, “The hedge-fund guys didn't build this country.These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky. They are energetic. They are very smart. But a lot of them—they are paper-pushers. They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It's ridiculous."
Trump appears to have conned his supporters. Is he remorseful? On Tuesday, I asked this of Trump’s campaign:
A question for @realDonaldTrump: will you return donations from supporters who gave based on belief you wouldn't take from big donors?
I was thinking in particular of Jason Sams, because I’d just read a question that the retired Army vet asked Trump on Facebook: “Where can we the American people send donations? I am 100% disabled determined by the VA with service connected disabilities. However with my limited income every dollar adds up and you will stay true to your core if the donations come from the American people and not corporations.”
For those who gave trust instead of money, restitution is more difficult. And many were trusting.
“Trump is the only one not controlled by others,” Vernon Wayne of Essie, Kentucky wrote.
“The least one can do is THANK YOU, for your sacrifice and generosity,” retired realtor Ernestine Hronas commented.
“I am not controlled by anyone either,” Tim Hunter wrote, “and I volunteer my time to help with your campaign in any way you see fit!”
“To paraphrase Pinnochio,” said Lawrence Phelps, a former program analyst at the Treasury Department, “there are no strings on you.”
Ruby Brown was enthusiastic:
That's what I want to lead our nation; someone who is willing to finance his own campaign! If they were required to pay their own way into office, the lobbyist couldn't demand anything and we the people would truly have voice in our government. As it is, we have no voice, and the King of the hill along with our senators and representatives are trampling on our constitution!
It's a sad day in America!!! Go Trump!
Paul Alvarez was impressed:
By self funding, you have won my respect because I too am a believer in paying my own way in life and I have taught my children to do the same. Yes, this approach requires working to pay your way, instead of rallying for people to hound one another for campaign donations. Your approach is what "paying your fair share" truly looks like. Many could stand to learn from this.
Bob Turner of Nashville was won over:
Self-funding creates a HUGE trust factor !! Donor control is one of your strongest arguments against the dishonest type of politics most of us detest.
You must know that.
William S. Weber of Pennsville, New Jersey, felt that Trump was doing something historic:
I am 73 years old and I never thought I would ever see the day a good man with enought money to run for president. I hope the people out their understand what this means. He will not owe anyone anything. He will not be influence by anyone. He can make decisions on what’s right or wrong. This has not happened in the last 120 years.Think about what this means for our country.
These are a tiny fraction of the people Caleb Howe of Red State was talking about when observing, “Trump’s voters heard what he told them over and over and over and over and over... They heard and believed and repeated ad nauseum that his self-funding was his biggest asset because it put him outside the system. It made him his own man. What’s more, those who were taking money from outside sources were considered to be owned by those sources. Trump explicitly stated time and again that his opponents were beholden to those who funded them. They were owned and he wasn’t. The reason he wasn’t owned was that he wasn’t taking the money.”
Hence the magnitude of this week’s betrayal. As Howe put it:
That’s a huge principle.
A minor detail like “I never said the general election” is just Clintonesque, “what the definition of is is” parsing. It’s hogwash. He established relentlessly and without pause that self-funding makes you independent and pure, and that not self-funding makes you impure, owned, and a puppet of outside interest. Now he is saying he’s going to take that money.
He’s agreeing to become owned. And it’s worse than just a vague notion of fundraising. He put together a sophisticated operation to get big, big money from big, big donors.
Last September, after Trump pledged to self-fund, Tanner Buckmaster responded on Facebook by declaring, “I am defending you to everyone I know. I sure hope you are real because I am putting my child's future in your hands.” Now Buckmaster and every other Trump supporter can see that the pledge to self-fund was a blatant lie. I wonder how many will keep supporting Trump and how many will reconsider. It’s no easy thing to face the fact that you’ve been duped by a conman. The smartest marks wise up. The ones in deepest denial get taken for all they’re worth.
Again, important to remember when the #BernieBros start hashtagging #NeverHillary because the two are the same...
For all the talk of how Donald Trump is going to pivot to a general election message and suddenly sound all moderate and stuff, he still seems to be working to appeal to the Republican base. Take abortion and the Supreme Court. Asked if he’d “protect the sanctity of life,” Trump had this Trumpian response:
"I will protect it, and the biggest way you can protect it is through the Supreme Court, and putting people on the court," Trump replied. "Actually, the biggest way you can protect it I guess is by electing me president."
Trump went on to show off his policy chops by suggesting that, during the next presidential administration, “one of the most important things, other than the security itself of the country, is going to be four to five Supreme Court justices.” And what he can promise about his own picks for the court is that “they’ll be pro-life and we’ll see about overturning” Roe v. Wade.
Just as Trump is trying to win over dedicated anti-abortion voters, anti-abortion groups are crawling back to him after being critical during the Republican primary. Marjorie Dannenfelser, head of the Susan B. Anthony List, is now on Team Trump just months after having warned Iowa voters that “America will only be a great nation when we have leaders of strong character who will defend both unborn children and the dignity of women,” and “We cannot trust Donald Trump to do either.” But now that Trump is the only game in town, it’s time to cozy up to him, just as he’s pretending to care about abortion.
Vice President Joe Biden told ABC News on Tuesday that while he would have made for the "best president," he was not able to devote himself to a campaign after the death of his son, Beau Biden.
"I had planned on running. It’s an awful thing to say. I think I would have been the best president. But it was the right thing, not just for my family, for me," Biden told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview that aired on Wednesday. "No one should ever seek the presidency unless they're able to devote their whole heart and soul and passion into just doing that. And Beau was my soul. I just wasn't ready to be able to do that."
Buried in this Monday piece about the difficulty Donald Trump would face in attempting to recruit members of a prospective Trump administration (if it came to that) is this nugget from Trump's team explaining that Trump has no interest in such policy experts right now anyway. Oh, and no interest in policy. Oh—and in fact doesn't want to hear or think anything about it, because his plan is to "figure out" what his actual policies for governing the United States of America might be after the November elections, and only if he wins.
A source familiar with Trump’s thinking explained that the billionaire businessman was reluctant to add new layers of policy experts now, feeling it would only muddy his populist message that has been hyperfocused on illegal immigration, trade and fighting Islamic extremists.
Touché. You wouldn't want to muddy your political message by adding facts or expertise to it. Damn experts, always fouling up perfectly good messages.
“He doesn’t want to waste time on policy and thinks it would make him less effective on the stump,” the Trump source said. “It won’t be until after he is elected but before he’s inaugurated that he will figure out exactly what he is going to do and who he is going to try to hire.”
So that's nice. He doesn't want to get sidetracked from his messages of hair-pulling fear and twitchy xenophobia with attempts to figure out just what the hell he might actually do, if the nation elected him to run things. Instead, he'll worry about it if it happens.
Sure, if I were in charge at Red Mountain High School in Mesa, Arizona, I would’ve been angry at Hunter Osborn, a football player who decided, on a teammate’s dare, to expose himself. He did it during a team photo as dozens of teammates lined up in the bleachers. True, he was only 18 at the time, the knucklehead.
And no, the photo isn’t all that graphic. The penis partly peeking out the top of number 42’s waistband is less noticeable than Waldo in one of his illustrated spreads. But that’s precisely why no one noticed what Osborn had done for months. It’s why the photo was reproduced in football programs and the high school year book.
All that time, the prank went unnoticed. Then, someone spotted it.
“Do you think I need this kind of headache a month before summer vacation?” I’d have growled at the kid. “In-school suspension for a week! You’ve lost the privilege of prom. And you won’t get your diploma ‘til you repay us for reprinting the yearbook.”
Something like that is my notion of how responsible adults might’ve handled the inappropriate prank. Instead, irresponsible adults in Mesa went completely overboard.
First, the school called the cops, because Americans seem to have decided that educators should farm out educational problems they once handled to law enforcement.
Next, when the police department answered, they didn’t say, “We’ve got unsolved murders on the books, a couple hundred rape cases to deal with in an average year, and more than one robbery committed here per day––since you’ve assembled a workforce specifically trained to discipline students who act up at school, do you think you could manage the inappropriate football photo without us?”
Instead, they launched an investigation. They continued this investigation even after looking at the photo and seeing that the partly exposed penis is about the least graphic, imposing, or plausibly harmful thing imaginable––an Arizona newspaper featured a photo of the yearbook page and nothing untoward can be seen at that resolution.
That is supposed to have hurt high schoolers with the whole Internet in their pockets? The micro-concussions of a single football season did more harm to these kids. Even a school spokesperson later said “it was unlikely the yearbook staff would have been able to identify the minor but critical spot during a normal production review.”
Still, the Mesa police questioned Osborn.
This is supposed to have hurt high schoolers with the whole Internet in their pockets?
USA Todayreported what happened next: “After confessing to exposing himself on a dare and telling police he was ‘disgusted’ by his own behavior, Osborn was charged with 69 counts of misdemeanor indecent exposure—one for each of the students present at the photo shoot—and one felony count of furnishing harmful items to minors.” They even outfitted him with an ankle monitor.
Beyond the absurdity of treating this as a criminal matter at all was the weirdness of the 69 counts. The other kids in the photo didn’t see Osborn’s penis that day. They were looking at the camera. What’s more, this team presumably showers together regularly, with no school officials or police officers imagining that anyone is harmed. So why the pretense that a bunch of guys who’ve likely seen Osborn stark naked were victims? Why charge according to the number of teammates?
A Change.org position calling for the teen to be spared gathered more than 6,000 signatures. It indulged an impulse to impose even harsher punishment on another individual. “He didn’t put the picture in the yearbook, he didn’t create the page, he wasn’t the editor that approved it, or the teacher responsible for publishing it and distributing it to students,” it states. “The teacher responsible for the yearbook should be fired. Red Mountain High School is using him as a scapegoat instead of taking any responsibility!”
On the contrary, no one should be fired. There was never cause to permanently alter anyone’s life over this. And thankfully, sensible people in Mesa, mostly people who weren’t in positions of authority, managed to avert catastrophe with common sense:
The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in Arizona announced Wednesday that high school football player Hunter Osborn will not face charges after he exposed himself during the team’s yearbook photo as a prank. Officials dismissed the case after all 69 people at the photo shoot—who were considered “victims”—declined to press charges.
Osborn shouldn’t have exposed himself in the photo. He should’ve face some punishment at school. But the educators and cops who thrust him into the criminal-justice system exhibited comparatively less maturity and more irresponsible behavior.
Norwegian YouTube channel Pistol Shrimps, the guys behind the "Batman in famous movie scenes" videos, have created a Captain America parody, that imagines the comic book superhero as a representative of various European countries.
We all know about Captain America, but what about other countries? Here are some of the captains in Europe. This is based on stereotypes and references from the different countries.
YouTube user Viva Frei was filming a squirrel with a small GoPro Session in a park in Montreal, when the cheeky rodent snatched the camera and ran off with it.
In my leisurely cruise through Moby-Dick, I have reached Chapter 87, “The Grand Armada,” and I enjoyed this lexicographical footnote so much I thought I’d pass it on. The footnoted sentence reads, “Stripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and after several hours’ pulling were almost disposed to renounce the chase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating token that they were now at last under the influence of that strange perplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive it in the whale, they say he is gallied.” Whereto the following is appended:
*To gally, or gallow, is to frighten excessively, – to confound with fright. It is an old Saxon word. It occurs once in Shakspere: –
The wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark
And make them keep their caves. Lear, Act III. sc. ii.
To common land usages, the word is now completely obsolete. When the polite landsman first hears it from the gaunt Nantucketer, he is apt to set it down as one of the whaleman’s self-derived savageries. Much the same is it with many other sinewy Saxonisms of this sort, which emigrated to the New-England rocks with the noble brawn of the old English emigrants in the time of the Commonwealth. Thus, some of the best and furthest-descended English words – the etymological Howards and Percys – are now democratised, nay, plebeianised – so to speak – in the New World.
The OED defines it as “To frighten, daze, scare, startle. Now [1898] only dial. and in the whale fishery”; the citations are:
1608 Shakespeare King Lear ix. 44 The wrathfull Skies gallow, the very wanderer of the Darke, and makes them keepe their caues.
1700 Let. 8 Apr. in T. Brown 3rd Vol. Wks. (1708) ii. 102 The People look’d as if they were gallied.
1823 New Monthly Mag.7 231 We were one and all mortally gallied at the sight.
1840 F. Marryat Poor Jack vi. 29 They [sc. bull whales] are..easily ‘gallied’, that is, frightened.
1874 C. M. Scammon Marine Mammals N. Amer. iii. iii. 227 The whale is approached in the most cautious manner, to avoid ‘gallying’ it.
1883 W. H. Cope Gloss. Hampshire Words ‘Galley them pigs out o’ the peasen.’
1888 F. T. Elworthy W. Somerset Word-bk.Gally, to frighten. (Very common.)
Alas, it hasn’t been updated, so the only etymology is “Old English a-gælwan to alarm.”
Now that Donald Trump has secured his place as the Republican Party's presidential nominee, the fact that his statements on matters of public policy often don't make sense will be taken much more seriously. The latest example came during yesterday's interview between Trump and CNN's Wolf Blitzer in which, among other things, Blitzer asked Trump about Puerto Rico.
You can read our explainer on the Puerto Rico situation here, but the long and short of it is that Puerto Rico owes a ton of money and, due to population loss, it can't pay. Under normal circumstances, a city or county or business in this situation would file for bankruptcy to reduce its debt burden, but the existing bankruptcy code doesn't let Puerto Rico do this. The White House and many congressional Democrats have proposed creating a bankruptcy process for Puerto Rico, but Republicans — at the behest of distressed debt funds that bought up Puerto Rican bonds — have blocked it.
Here's Blitzer trying to ask Trump if he agrees the bankruptcy law should change:
WOLF BLITZER: They're prevented from using the bankruptcy laws, Puerto Rico, as opposed to all the US states. You've used those bankruptcy laws over the years.
DONALD TRUMP: I'm the king — I understand. By the way —
WOLF BLITZER: Should Puerto Rico have an opportunity to use the bankruptcy laws?
DONALD TRUMP: As a very successful person I would buy companies, throw them in a chapter, bankrupt it, negotiate — I would do great deals, I didn't use them for myself, I used them as a businessperson. Many of the top people in my category use the laws. I know more about debt than practically anybody, I love debt. I also love reducing debt, and I know how to do it better than anybody. I will tell you with Puerto Rico they have too much debt. You can't just restructure; you have to use the laws, cut the debt way down, and get back to business, because they can't survive with the kind of debt they have. I would not bail out if I were — if I were in that position I wouldn't bail them out.
WOLF BLITZER: Would you let them have a bankruptcy option?
DONALD TRUMP: They're going to have no choice. if they're not going to pay the bill they're not going to pay the interest on the bonds —
WOLF BLITZER: They can't.
DONALD TRUMP: They can't. You can't — you know, the expression you can't take it out of the grave if they don't have it. Whether they officially declare or not, but ultimately what they have to do is cut the debt way down. They're never going to pay that debt off, they have to cut it way down, and the United States is going to be in that position very soon because they have too much debt.
Trump is so busy here being defensive about his business record that he's not understanding what the question is. He seems to think that Puerto Rico legally can file for bankruptcy and the problem is they haven't done so, and that what they need is a smarter leader/negotiator at the helm who can clean up the balance sheet the way he would have in one of his real estate deals.
But the whole political issue is that a) Puerto Rico can't do this, legally speaking, and b) the political party that Trump leads is blocking the Obama administration from changing the law. But Trump has no idea what's going on and doesn't seem to be listening to Blitzer's questions.
It's easy to go numb to these kinds of things, roll your eyes at pedantic coverage, and say Trump's success so far shows voters don't care about small details like whether or not the president has any idea what he's talking about.
But the fact of the matter is that very few people vote in primaries at all, and lots of people don't pay much attention to early campaign coverage. The fact that Trump repeatedly shows up to interviews totally unprepared to discuss the issues of the day in an informed manner and proceeds to wing it in an inconsistent and ideologically unpredictable way is important, and people need to keep hearing about it.
After a journalist was met with a torrent of anti-Semitic abuse and threats over her GQ magazine profile of Melania Trump, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump refused to condemn the attacks from his supporters.
The 2016 presidential campaign and practical politics in the United States Congress have been operating in two parallel universes for months now. But with Donald Trump the all-but-certain Republican Party nominee, that's about to change. A raft of GOP senators standing for reelection in blue or purple states are going to find that they are in a very uncomfortable situation thanks to a trap Majority Leader Mitch McConnell inadvertently set for them.
The problem is Merrick Garland, the relatively moderate circuit court judge Barack Obama named as his preferred replacement for Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Republicans won't hold a vote on his nomination — they won't even hold a hearing — on the theory that it's inappropriate to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in an election year.
That was a principle that served its purpose when it was first laid down but now serves another purpose entirely — directly linking every Senate election in the land to the presidential race.
Origins of a Supreme Court blockade
The official Republican Party position on Garland came together remarkably quickly back on February 13. At this point most GOP leaders were still assuming that when the then-crowded field of candidates began to thin, there would be a natural coalescence around a conventional politician.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee's communications director kicked things off:
What is less than zero? The chances of Obama successfully appointing a Supreme Court Justice to replace Scalia?
All of Cruz's competitors for the nomination swiftly agreed in a televised debate, and conservative pundits also hopped on the bandwagon.
Now, at this point a fairly normal thing in the context of American political history would have been for more electorally vulnerable members of the Senate GOP caucus to raise doubts about this strategy, and then for the party's caucus leader to tell his backbenchers that there was no way to hold everyone together on this idea. But that's not the modern-day GOP. McConnell picked up the Cruz/Lee/Trump line on holding the seat vacant, so did Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley, and so did the rest of the caucus.
Now, two and a half months later, we have GOP senators from New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere holding a Supreme Court seat open for Trump.
An awkward situation for Republican senators
It's by no means unusual for a smattering of legislators here and there to face the problem of a top of the ticket who is unpopular in their home state (just ask Joe Manchin).
The way you deal with it, of course, is by distancing yourself from some of the presidential candidate's less popular stances and emphasizing the idea that you are an independent thinker.
But this is precisely what makes the Supreme Court issue so difficult. The refusal to even hold a hearing or a vote on Obama's nominee is the opposite of independent thinking. It's a pure party position — a stance that the outcome of the November election should be decisive in shaping the outcome, and therefore that Republicans would rather defer to Trump's judgment.
Republicans who vow to deny Garland a hearing and who pledge to support Donald Trump if he is their party’s nominee are saying: Democracy somehow requires that this vacancy on a non-majoritarian institution must be filled only after voters have had their say through the election of the next president. And constitutional values will be served if the vacancy is filled not by Garland but by someone chosen by President Trump, a stupendously uninformed dilettante who thinks judges "sign" what he refers to as "bills." There is every reason to think that Trump understands none of the issues pertinent to the Supreme Court’s role in the American regime, and there is no reason to doubt that he would bring to the selection of justices what he brings to all matters — arrogance leavened by frivolousness.
Trump’s multiplying Republican apologists do not deny the self-evident — that he is as clueless regarding everything as he is about the nuclear triad. These invertebrate Republicans assume that as president he would surround himself with people unlike himself — wise and temperate advisers. So, we should wager everything on the hope that the man who says his "number one" foreign policy adviser is "myself" (because "I have a very good brain") will succumb to humility and rely on people who actually know things. If Republicans really think that either their front-runner or the Democrats’ would nominate someone superior to Garland, it would be amusing to hear them try to explain why they do.
Of course, in political life every once in a while you have to take a calculated risk in pursuit of some goal or another.
But that's what makes the GOP's procedural stand in favor of holding a Supreme Court seat vacant for a year so that Trump can fill it so odd. It wasn't calculated at all. It's something Republicans fell into one weekend after a spurt of hot takes on Twitter without really thinking it through. And now it's going to come back to haunt them.
An 81-year-old man was exonerated this week, more than 50 years after he was convicted of murder.
Paul Gatling was found guilty of killing Lawrence Rothbort in 1963. Rothbort was shot in his home in Brooklyn by a man who broke in and demanded money, alleged his wife.
Gatling's case was rife with misconduct. There was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, and Rothbort's wife couldn't pick him out of a lineup. Gatling was only implicated after another man claimed to have seen him in the area—but according to Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson, that man "was a witness in other cases and was known to have committed perjury."
What's more, CBS News reports that "[d]efense attorneys were never given some police reports, including a description of the suspect as several years younger than Gatling."
Regardless of the shoddy evidence, Gatling was convicted after Rothbort's wife eventually stated that he was the killer, despite the fact that she was previously unable to identify him. From CBS News:
As the trial was underway, Gatling's attorney and family pressed him to plead guilty to second-degree murder, afraid that he would otherwise face the death penalty if convicted. He agreed, and was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison in October 1964. His sentence was commuted by then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller at the behest of the Legal Aid Society and he was released in January 1974.
“The cops told me they would make sure I was convicted and the lawyers said they were going to execute me. I was a young black man. With the white, pregnant wife in front of an all-white jury pointing me out, it was over,” Gatling told NBC News.
Tens of millions of Americans want to deny Donald Trump the presidency. How best to do it? Many who oppose the billionaire will be tempted to echo Bret Stephens: “If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling,” the Wall Street Journal columnist told the Republican frontrunner’s supporters, “you’re appalling.”
Some will be tempted to respond like anti-Trump protesters in Costa Mesa, California. Violent elements in that crowd threw rocks at a passing pickup truck, smashed the window of a police cruiser, and bloodied at least one Trump supporter. Others in the crowd waved Mexican flags. “I knew this was going to happen,” a 19-year-old told the L.A. Times. “It was going to be a riot. He deserves what he gets.”
Still others will be tempted to sound off against Trump on Facebook or Twitter while feeling all but helpless to do anything else about the course of the 2016 election.
All three reactions make Trump’s election more likely. That’s why all three reactions should be rejected by anti-Trump voters as costly, unaffordable self-indulgences.
Here is how those who want to beat Trump should behave:
Show earnest respect to his supporters while empathetically persuading them to change their minds.
Telling someone they’re scum for supporting a cause or a candidate causes most people to stubbornly redouble their position. In contrast, persuasive scholarship shows that even short conversations with voters can change their minds about even the most polarizing issues if the persuader engages respectfully, listens attentively to their conversation partner’s viewpoint, and forges a human connection while explaining why they came to different conclusions based on their experiences. This technique has proved effective in a rigorous scientific study where actual canvassers spoke with actual voters prior to an actual election. It is effectively explained in greater detail in a This American Life episode. If you want to hear what it sounds like for a pro-choice canvasser to persuade a staunchly pro-life voter to change her mind very quickly, listen here. If you can’t bring yourself to treat someone as you’d want to be treated even in service of stopping a dangerous leader you lack the standing to stigmatize hate.
At anti-Trump protests, eschew violence and any other behavior that helps his cause.
The activist left is very antagonistic to “respectability politics,” which Wikipedia defines as “attempts by marginalized groups to police their own members and show their social values as compatible with mainstream values rather than challenging the mainstream for its failure to accept difference.” Since nonviolence is a value held dear by large majorities on the activist left, not a mainstream value it rejects, efforts to keep anti-Trump protests as peaceful as possible are not at all inconsistent with rejecting respectability politics. They’re a no-brainer. Results-oriented activists should go a step farther. If organizers at anti-Trump rallies did their utmost to keep Mexican flags out of the hands of activists and to have as many American flags waving as possible that may or may not constitute respectability politics. Labels aside, that tactic would significantly increase the chance that a given rally will help the anti-Trump cause and significantly decrease the chance that a given rally will harm the anti-Trump cause. All who regard preventing the empowerment of a demagogue who pits his supporters against Mexicans and Muslims as a hugely important goal should prioritize its achievement over dramatically less urgent and important matters.
Give time or money to the process—it’s much more effective than snarking on social media.
Almost any American can meaningfully contribute to a given candidate’s defeat. By investing their own time, a citizen can canvass for or against a candidate, help to register new voters, or help to ensure that registered voters of a given persuasion actually get out and vote on election day. With even a modest amount of money, a citizen can join with other donors of modest means to great effect, as Bernie Sanders has proven this election cycle, funding a national political operation with small contributions. A group of three or four friends who walk around anti-Trump protests registering voters could easily do more good than the protest itself. There are structural factors in American politics that make some changes all but unachievable, even by energized citizens, but defeating a candidate isn’t one of them, so neither helplessness nor cynicism nor defeatism is a defensible posture.
On a gut level, millions would rather vilify neighbors with political disagreements than persuade them. In spite of themselves, many activists relish an emotionally satisfying protest more than an effective one. Many non-activists would rather sit around complaining about the country is going to hell than to get off their couch and help save it.
Many Americans can see these pathologies in themselves.
What more fitting way to beat Trump than to use one’s brains to triumph over one’s gut?
Some will say that this is all unfair—that no one should have to engage Trump supporters respectfully, or police the behavior of protesters, or expend time or money in the civic process, to prevent a demagogue with hateful beliefs from taking power.
Personally, I think Trump’s critics are right. Trump should not be the Republican nominee. He should not have millions of supporters. No one should have to persuade as many of them as possible to defect or stay home. But he will be the nominee and he does have millions of supporters. Trump opponents can take up the burden of beating him or eschew that burden as unfair, increasing Trump’s chance at victory.
That is the stark reality of their historic choice.
My god. This is so amazing. I wish he were just like Ross Perot, though: clearly not capable of winning but worth the entertainment.
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump on Tuesday aired a tabloid story that said Rafael Cruz, Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) father, was seen with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
"If you want to understand what's going on with Trump, I think you can't do much better than to look at this 2015 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, which reveals a huge partisan gap on a pretty basic question — is racism against white people a bigger problem than racism against racial minority groups?
Republicans said yes; Democrats and independents said no"
Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee.
The only way he won't is if something unthinkable happens.He could be struck by lightning. He could pull off his Trump mask and reveal that he's actually been Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt this whole time. Short of that, I dunno. You never want to say never in American politics, but this is the exception.
He is way up in the polls in Indiana, which will net him a bunch of delegates. Then he's set to dominate West Virginia and New Jersey further down the road, and after that he looks likely to win most of California's delegates. All this means he will probably secure a majority of delegates by early June when the last states have voted — and so he'll win on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention.
But even more to the point, there is simply no sign that even if he does fall slightly short of an outright delegate majority, the party will try to meaningfully contest the convention. There are a handful of Republican Party leaders who are fundamentally opposed to Trump, but they are genuinely few and far between. The vast majority of GOP elected officials don't think nominating Trump is a good idea, but they have no intention at this point of doing anything to stop it from happening.
The telling collapse of the Cruz-Kasich alliance
The short-lived Cruz-Kasich pact, in which John Kasich would throw the race in Indiana and Ted Cruz would do likewise in Oregon, illustrates the fundamental problem — there are steps through which Republican Party actors could have stopped Trump, but none of them have ever really come together, and now they are out of time.
An Indiana pact was just about the lowest-cost form of collaboration imaginable. The reason is that for Kasich to instruct his supporters to vote for Cruz in Indiana would be a zero-cost move. Right now it is mathematically impossible for either Kasich or Cruz to secure a majority of delegates. The only way for either one of them to win the nomination is through a contested convention. And to get a contested convention, they need to stop Trump from getting a majority. Indiana allocates a large share of votes to whoever wins a statewide plurality.
Therefore, far and away the best hope for Kasich is to prevent Trump from gaining a plurality in Indiana. And to do that, he needs people who want Kasich to be president to vote for Cruz, who is currently in second place.
There was a brief moment when Kasich pulled resources out of Indiana, but even during the heyday of the "alliance" he wasn't willing to actually tell his supporters to vote Cruz — even though the benefits to Kasich of a strategic vote for Cruz exist even if Cruz doesn't make any concessions to Cruz.
That's all below the radar of normal people watching the election from the sidelines, but it's crucially important because it shows the extent to which there is genuinely no anti-Trump movement in the Republican Party. There's a Twitter hashtag and a fair amount of talk from conservative intellectuals, but the vast majority of the party's elected officials, donors, and grassroots leaders have been watching nervously and not saying much.
There are lots of people out there, ranging from true conservatives like Cruz's supporters to moderates like Kasich's supporters, who don't really want Trump to be the nominee. But nobody is doing anything to stop him, and the closer he gets to winning the more people join his bandwagon.
Trump is also incredibly unpopular
The Trump phenomenon is confounding many people because, on the one hand, it seems impossible to many that the Republican Party would nominate such a weak general election candidate, while it seems impossible to many others that Donald Trump could be such a strong candidate.
So let's be clear about this. Trump is, by every sign available, a historically weak general election candidate.
His unfavorable numbers are off the charts, he is losing to Hillary Clinton in every head-to-head poll, and his policy proposals are going to attract a level of media scrutiny that Republican nominees normally avoid because conservative intellectuals have spent a lot of time dumping on them over the past five months.
At the same time, Republicans aren't going to let these facts stop him from being their nominee.
It turns out that party elites have less sway over the nominating process than many of us thought 12 months ago. In particular, I would say it turns out that the commercial right-of-center mass media — especially Fox News and talk radio but also the Breitbart corner of the internet — is simply not that invested in what party elites think or want. Trump is not liked by a majority of Americans, but he is certainly a compelling television character, and catering to the minority taste for Trumpism has proven to be an effective business strategy.
Given his ability to attract copious quantities of free media and his personal wealth, Trump can overcome the disadvantages of being disliked by the party's professional operative class and leverage his grassroots popularity to victory.
VIDEO: This is how much conservatives hate Trump
It's going to take a Democrat to stop Trump
If you want to understand what's going on with Trump, I think you can't do much better than to look at this 2015 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, which reveals a huge partisan gap on a pretty basic question — is racism against white people a bigger problem than racism against racial minority groups?
Republicans said yes; Democrats and independents said no:
This is why Trump's Republican opponents haven't made the obvious criticism of him that he's running a campaign based on racial demagoguery.
To Republican primary voters, it's not obvious that racist demagoguery is a bad thing. Or, at a minimum, it seems like a less pernicious thing than the apparently pervasive discrimination against white people in American society.
Typically political parties try to emphasize hot-button wedge issues where a majority of the public is on their side, and deemphasize ones where they are in the minority. On the question of racism, Republicans are distinctly in the minority. But party elites' ability to prevent a campaign from being waged on this issue has been checked by Trump. So he's going to be the nominee. Not because he's an unstoppable juggernaut, but because it's going to take a Democrat to stop him.
If there's one thing absolutely everybody knows about urban politics, it's that nobody wants low-income housing built in their neighborhood. Breaking up concentrations of poverty by building subsidized housing in affluent areas sounds like a great idea, but rich people veto it. So instead we build it in neighborhoods that are already lower-income and disenfranchised, where it creates further burdens on already troubled places. So when possible, poor neighborhoods also veto creating new low-income housing — which leaves the very poorest residents with nowhere to go.
People think it will further exacerbate the difficulties of neighborhoods already saddled with difficulties, but the data shows otherwise. Crime rates fall and property values rise when subsidized housing is built in a poor neighborhood.
What the study says
They study this looking specifically at housing built using the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), which provides funding for the construction of subsidized housing. By analyzing transaction and demographic data from 129 counties they find the following striking facts:
Neighborhoods with a median income below $26,000 see a 6.5 percent increase in property values within 0.1 miles of the LIHTC development site.
By contrast, in mostly white neighborhoods with incomes above $54,000, there are house price declines of approximately 2.5 percent within 0.1 miles of the LIHTC development site.
In low-income neighborhoods, the introduction of affordable housing decreases crime and decreases segregation.
In high-income neighborhoods, the introduction of affordable housing does not lead to an increase in crime.
This finding is a bit depressing in the context of the behavior of homebuyers in affluent neighborhoods. The low-income housing developments don't increase crime, but people flee the area anyway out of either racial or class prejudice.
But the finding regarding low-income neighborhoods is extremely encouraging.
It suggests that adding new low-income housing in certain neighborhoods can be a win-win policy that not only helps families get a place to live but also improves the circumstances of nearby troubled neighborhoods.
How this works
The authors don't offer much of a causal theory of why adding low-income housing to an already poor neighborhood serves as effective neighborhood development strategy beyond noting that lowering crime rates would probably raise property values.
My guess is that if this result holds up under further scrutiny we will be seeing largely that urban spaces benefit from having more people in them. In an affluent area where housing is already expensive, adding LIHTC developments will likely crowd out market rate developments. But in poorer areas there may be nobody interested in investing in market-rate development. LIHTC development helps because it is development leading to a higher local population, more vibrant streets, more retail, and a general sense of increased activity.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) doled out some unsolicited parenting advice at a Sunday evening campaign rally, telling a heckler he'd get a "spanking" for his behavior in the Cruz household.
I thought this was interesting, both thinking about Sullivan's new article (which is worth the read itself) and in it's commentary. I really don't think Trump could win in 2020, and I'm sort of with Sullivan in being unphased that the rules of the party might sometimes deny someone who the people want. The constitution has check and balances on the people just as it does on the branches of government.
Andrew Sullivan is back, with a long piece in New York Magazine about how Donald Trump’s campaign is evidence of the decadence of our democracy and a harbinger of its possible end. I’m glad to see he’s his usual level-headed, temperate self. He concludes as follows:
[T]hose Democrats who are gleefully predicting a Clinton landslide in November need to both check their complacency and understand that the Trump question really isn’t a cause for partisan Schadenfreude anymore. It’s much more dangerous than that. Those still backing the demagogue of the left, Bernie Sanders, might want to reflect that their critique of Clinton’s experience and expertise — and their facile conflation of that with corruption — is only playing into Trump’s hands. That it will fall to Clinton to temper her party’s ambitions will be uncomfortable to watch, since her willingness to compromise and equivocate is precisely what many Americans find so distrustful. And yet she may soon be all we have left to counter the threat. She needs to grasp the lethality of her foe, moderate the kind of identity politics that unwittingly empowers him, make an unapologetic case that experience and moderation are not vices, address much more directly the anxieties of the white working class—and Democrats must listen.
More to the point, those Republicans desperately trying to use the long-standing rules of their own nominating process to thwart this monster deserve our passionate support, not our disdain. This is not the moment to remind them that they partly brought this on themselves. This is a moment to offer solidarity, especially as the odds are increasingly stacked against them. Ted Cruz and John Kasich face their decisive battle in Indiana on May 3. But they need to fight on, with any tactic at hand, all the way to the bitter end. The Republican delegates who are trying to protect their party from the whims of an outsider demagogue are, at this moment, doing what they ought to be doing to prevent civil and racial unrest, an international conflict, and a constitutional crisis. These GOP elites have every right to deploy whatever rules or procedural roadblocks they can muster, and they should refuse to be intimidated.
And if they fail in Indiana or Cleveland, as they likely will, they need, quite simply, to disown their party’s candidate. They should resist any temptation to loyally back the nominee or to sit this election out. They must take the fight to Trump at every opportunity, unite with Democrats and Independents against him, and be prepared to sacrifice one election in order to save their party and their country.
For Trump is not just a wacky politician of the far right, or a riveting television spectacle, or a Twitter phenom and bizarre working-class hero. He is not just another candidate to be parsed and analyzed by TV pundits in the same breath as all the others. In terms of our liberal democracy and constitutional order, Trump is an extinction-level event. It’s long past time we started treating him as such.
Regardless of whether Sullivan is right about the threat Trump poses to democracy (and I think he does pose a real risk, though as I’ve said before I think he’s more Berlusconi than Mussolini), this is not well thought out, because it doesn’t consider how the voters are likely to react to attempts to frustrate their exercise of the franchise. The evidence by this point should be overwhelming that the use of procedural tricks is backfiring, and strengthening Trump. Ted Cruz manages to snag all the delegates out of Colorado without an election, and Trump runs in New York and Pennsylvania on a platform of “the system is rigged against me” – and wins overwhelming landslide victories. Cruz and John Kasich form an anti-Trump pact and Trump’s numbers go up; it turns out Kasich voters actually liked their candidate as opposed to merely being “anti-Trump” voters – and that a clear majority of voters strongly disapprove of the pact. What makes Sullivan think that further shenanigans won’t strengthen Trump further?
I’ll make a prediction right here. If Trump is denied the nomination in 2016 because of procedural tricks – the latest trial balloon is denying delegates’ credentials – he’ll be elected President in 2020, either as a Republican or under the banner of a new party that replaces the Republicans. It’ll be 1828 all over again.
So how can Trump be stopped?
Well, it’s possible he can be stopped passively. Republicans could campaign in a lackluster fashion and let demographics do the work for Hillary Clinton. Then come back after Trump’s landslide loss and pick up the pieces. That is almost certainly what the institutional Republican Party is planning: to lose by not trying very hard.
There are just a few wee problems with this plan. First, if the Republican campaign is lackluster generally, then officeholders up and down the ballot will see their jobs at risk. That means that their interests will not be aligned with the interests of the leaders of the national party – and I’d guess they’ll follow their own interests when they see the conflict. Second, if the GOP campaigns in a lackluster fashion, that’ll give Clinton a freer hand, which, in turn will be obvious to GOP voters, who may get angry. And when they get angry, they may vote for Trump. And finally, isn’t this exactly how they planned to defeat Trump in the primary? How’d that work out for them?
If Sullivan is right, and Trump is an “extinction level event” for our republic, then sterner measures are called for. But if procedural tricks will backfire, what else can be done?
Fortunately, democracy itself provides two perfectly respectable and effective ways to defeat Donald Trump. But they both involve destroying the Republican Party.
The first option is for a rump conservative faction to bolt the party and run independently. They can make a very straightforward argument that Trump is in no sense a conservative: not only does he violate movement conservative shibboleths all over the place, but he has patently zero respect for the Constitution. He’ll be no better than Clinton on some issues, and worse on others, and besides he’s a personal disgrace. So vote your conscience, and vote for – I dunno, Cruz/Fiorina.
This would unquestionably elect Hillary Clinton as the next President. But the argument to conservatives would be that this is far less-bad than electing Trump. And they’d tell a happy story about how, in 2020, they could take back the party, run a real conservative, and win. Instead of dreading 1828, they’d be looking forward to 1920.
Unfortunately, that story will be a lie. Instead, after such a defection we’d see outright civil war, as both Trump die-hards and establishment Republicans see conservatives as having crossed an unforgivable rubicon. Letting them back in would be admitting that movement conservatives have an outright veto over every major party decision. Not to mention that Trump’s partisans would have been given a clear mandate to play exactly the same game in 2020, threatening to bolt if their guy doesn’t get the nod again, and a fair shot at a re-match. Instead of ceding one election to recover and return stronger, Republicans might permanently tear their party in two, and give the Democrats control of the Presidency for a generation.
The second option would be for notable Republicans to flat out support Hillary Clinton. Either leave the Republican Party or form “Republicans for Hillary” and stuff it with an ideological cross-section of party members. The group couldn’t just say “we can’t stand Trump” though – as the primaries should have amply demonstrated, you can’t beat something with nothing. It would have to say, “Hillary Clinton won’t be so bad.” Get a bunch of manufacturers to say that she understands the economy, and while they’d rather see a real Republican in charge, they prefer Clinton to Trump. Get a bunch of retired military brass to say that Clinton has a clear understanding of American interests and capabilities and a good relationship with the services, and that she’d make a perfectly acceptable Commander in Chief under whom they’d be proud to serve. Whereas Trump . . . Make the case that, while Clinton isn’t ideal, she’d certainly be an adequate President – hardly disastrous. She’d muddle through, and the country would muddle through, and that’s good enough.
The problem with this strategy, of course, is that it trashes the entirety of GOP messaging. The conventions of American partisanship in this day and age require outright apocalypticism about the opposing party. The Democrats can’t just be wrongheaded about this or that – they have to be outright aiming to destroy the United States of America. “Republicans for Hillary” would have to abandon a generation worth of demonization in an heartbeat.
Would many Republicans follow them? It’d be a test, in a way of just how Orwellian the party has become – how many would reliably declare that we have always been at war with Eurasia once their leaders told them it was so? Based on Trump’s performance in the primary so far, I’d say “not many.” But it wouldn’t have to be that many. There’s a big part of the country that is plainly really angry and ready to elect somebody manifestly unsuited to the office in order to express that anger. But it’s not a majority. In a baseline 50-50 nation, even the #NeverTrump contingent could swing an election.
The trouble comes later, when they try to go home again. Because in abandoning the party, they will have ceded it outright to Donald Trump. And they’ll have no obvious mechanism for winning it back, particularly not after a betrayal of that magnitude.
Which is why the leadership of the GOP is reconciling itself to Trump. They know that his victory means either vassalage or exile, and that’s not a very palatable choice. So they are either convincing themselves that he is not an “extinction-level event” or that, notwithstanding the impending end of the world, they know which side their bread is buttered on.
And right there in a nutshell is the problem with elites that Trump has been riding to victory.
Great job House. You guys knew this was coming and refused to work out a solution.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced that Puerto Rico's government will not make nearly $370 million in bond payments due Monday after a failure to restructure or find a political solution to the U.S. territory's spiraling public debt crisis.
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Public Religion Research Institute
