Roger Launius previously reviewed it at Quest, but he has a slightly different take at his blog, which he also posted at Amazon. I’m not unhappy with a four-star review, but I’m always interested in an explanation of why it’s not five, for future reference.
Category Archives: Popular Culture
Trump Bashes Hillary
And Ben Shapiro applauds.
The only good thing about Trump as a candidate is that he’s not afraid to go after the media’s pet incompetent criminal.
Top Space Influencers
I’d be more gratified by being in this stratosphere if I could see more things happening that I’m actually influencing. But maybe I’m being too impatient. I also wish that being an influencer paid better.
[Wednesday-morning update]
The most amusingly ironic thing about this is that I'm in an ongoing war on the phrase "space exploration." https://t.co/USEAb5wfRJ
— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) June 21, 2016
NASA’s Mars Recruitment Posters
I think that these are a cruel fraud on a young generation.
Body Painting
This is amazingly beautiful work.
Trump’s GOP Endorsers
Rich Lowry has no sympathy for them:
The Republican establishment has reacted in shock and dismay at Trump’s attacks on the judge hearing the Trump University case, as if it were unaware the party had nominated a man whose calling card has been out-of-bounds, highly charged personal attacks on his opponents.
It must have missed it when he took shots at Ben Carson’s Seventh Day Adventism. It wasn’t watching TV that time when he doubted that Mitt Romney is a Mormon. It put it out of its mind that one of his main arguments against Cruz was that he was a Canadian ineligible for the presidency, and that he liked to sneeringly let it drop every now and then that Cruz’s real name is Rafael. Trump’s suggestion that Cruz couldn’t be an evangelical Christian because of his Cuban ancestry and his Dad might have been involved in the Kennedy assassination must have been similarly memory-holed. And Trump’s birtherism? Hey, who hasn’t harbored suspicions that the president might have been born in Kenya and covered up his secret with a fraudulent birth certificate?
If Trump didn’t call Curiel a Mexican unworthy of hearing his case, you’d almost wonder what had knocked the candidate off his game. But the Republican establishment seems to have believed that it had an implicit pact (unbeknownst to Trump) that he could have the party so long as he didn’t embarrass it too badly.
The breach in this imaginary agreement has occasioned epic ducking and covering. The new equivalent of medieval scholastic philosophers are the Republican senators insisting on heretofore unnoticed distinctions between different levels of support for a presidential candidate.
I share his lack of sympathy.
Trump And Climate
He and his children once backed urgent action.
But don’t call him a Democrat!
I think a lot of supporters are going to be very disappointed if he wins.
Muhammad Ali
I haven’t said anything about him, but my response to his death was, “Meh.” Partly, I guess, because I detest the “sport” of boxing. But I agree with this: The Nation of Islam and our national concussion:
Ali was certainly one of the most interesting Americans of the past half-century—a great athlete who, with wit and wile, marketed himself as “The Greatest” and was accepted by millions as just that. He was not a saint or nearly a saint.
He is supposed to be a hero for standing up for his religious principles. Yet the religious group that he embraced—the faction of the Nation of Islam associated with Louis Farrakhan—was one grounded in racism and in hatred for Jews, “white devils,” and America. How bad was the NOI? It negotiated with the Ku Klux Klan in an effort to achieve the two sides’ mutual goal of racial separatism. [See my blog post on the NOI, at https://capitalresearch.org/2015/04/hell-breaks-out-in-baltimore-plus-what-farrakhan-believes/ , conveniently reposted below.]
Back then, when he was under the influence of the NOI, Ali was so ignorant that he renounced his birth name, Cassius Clay Jr., as a “slave name,” when in fact the Cassius Clay for whom Ali’s father was named, the historical figure, was an abolitionist hero. Clay survived a murder plot by supporters of slavery (he killed the would-be assassin with a Bowie knife), was a founder of the Republican Party, pushed Lincoln to issue what became the Emancipation Proclamation, and, as ambassador to Russia, helped win the Civil War by keeping Russia on the Union side.
During his time in the Nation of Islam, Ali spoke out against “race mixing.” See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVpfcq4pV5U
Ali was a draft dodger. In our country’s history, Conscientious Objectors have taken roles ranging from hospital worker to vaccine experimentee, to retain their honor while living consistently with their pacifistic principles. Ali didn’t do that. He pulled a Clinton, putting himself above the rules by which others had to live.
Yup.
[Update a few minutes later]
Trump’s Signal/Noise Problem
Yes, it is a big one. And it’s because he’s a narcissist, who thinks that everything is about him. He’s even worse than Obama in that regard, if such a thing is possible.
[Update a few minutes later]
Who will the Republicans replace Trump with?
GOP delegates will have to decide at some point if they want to lose the election with their principles, or without them.
— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) June 7, 2016
[Update a few minutes later]
The Trump Non Sequitur: Jonah restates what I’ve been saying since this Trump nonsense began:
This argument above is a very good example of the Trump non-sequitur. I agree entirely with Decius and Steve about the ideological base-stealing implicit in diversity-mongering. I wrote about this at length in my last book.
Where I jump ship is the claim — or to be more fair, the suggestion in Steve and Decius’ cases – that Trump is doing any of this on purpose or that it will lead to anything positive.
These are two separate claims. So let’s take them separately. Is Trump doing this on purpose for anything like the reasons enunciated above? Of course not. Trump has a long history of attacking judges for his narrow self-interest. Certainly Occam’s razor would suggest that’s what he’s doing here. The Trump University fraud case is generating very bad publicity for Trump, as he’s admitted (so was the story that he, at best, slow-walked donating money he promised to vets). So Trump goes on the offensive and changes the subject to this “Mexican” stuff. I just think it’s ridiculous to think Trump is motivated in this case by some remotely sophisticated, never mind sophisticatedly conservative, understanding of identity politics. After all, this is the guy who criticized Justice Scalia for his stance on affirmative action. It’s more like Trump is a kind of angry Chauncey Gardner who benefits from intellectuals’ reading deeply — too deeply — into his outbursts.
Yes. It’s important to remember that idiot savants are still idiots.
[Update a few minutes later]
“Mr. Speaker: Rescind your endorsement.”
This is why I have never endorsed him. I have nothing to rescind.
I will never endorse Trump, but I will never endorse Hillary ten times as much.
— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) June 7, 2016
[Update a while later]
Hey, you leftists who want Trump to lose? Pro tip: Stop calling him a racist and a bigot. It just feeds support for him, even for people like me, who think he will be a truly awful president.
[Late-afternoon update]
In my view, Trump is grossly unfit to be president, in both mind and character — especially the latter. Even if I agreed with him on the issues — even if I thought his worldview sound — I would balk at supporting him, owing to the issue of character.
But let me spend a second on the issues. His tendency is toward big government. He says no to a reform of entitlements. He says no to free trade. He threatens to withdraw from NATO. He likes Obama’s unilateral opening to Cuba. He sings the praises of Planned Parenthood. And so on.
What he calls for, mainly, is strength, plus “winning.” This is not the mentality of a constitutional conservative or a liberal democrat. Then, overshadowing everything, there is the issue of character. Trump mocks the handicapped — physically mocks them — for the enjoyment of his audience. He insults women on the basis of their looks. He brags of the women he has bedded, including “seemingly very happily married” ones. He mocks the religions of others. (Distinctly un-American.) He implied that Ted Cruz’s father had a link to the Kennedy assassination. And on and on. By nominating him, the Republican party has disfigured itself, morally.
Democrats won’t like to hear this, but for all those years, I thought the Republican party had the high ground, morally. I feel that this ground has collapsed beneath me. That is one of the painful aspects of this moment. If someone now says to me, “Ha, ha, Donald Trump is the presidential nominee of your party!” I say, “No, he isn’t.” He represents the Republicans, who, on the basis of this nomination, are transformed. I respect, admire, and love many Republicans, of course — I was their fellow party member until two seconds ago. But, to say it again, the presidential nominee stamps the party. He is the brand of the party. As I see it, or smell it, an odor now attaches to the GOP, and it will linger long past 2016, no matter what happens on Election Day.
If I’d ever been a Republican, I would definitely feel Jay’s pain.
The Real Donald Trump
I have no idea who it is, but the private one is clearly different than the public one. Profoundly ignorant in both cases though, on the issues of the day, and the narcissism comes through in bot cases as well.