Contested primaries

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a pretty good article about how presidential primaries work, and why it’s that way:

…[I]ncreasingly, any primary process can be effectively overwhelmed by a highly motivated subset of voters who bear little resemblance to the electorate as a whole.

The job of a political party, though, isn’t simply to validate the vote, to lend itself out as a vehicle for whatever uprising has suddenly taken hold in its ranks. Parties exist to advance agendas, to enact policies, to attain and hold power. They exist, in other words, to win.

Trump doesn’t really adhere to any governing agenda, and a mountain of polls suggest that he repulses a strikingly high percentage of voters. If Trump arrives in Cleveland with 1,237 delegates, then he’s earned the nomination, without having resorted to subterfuge or even having tapped his own fortune, and Republicans are stuck with him anyway. But if that number tops out at 1,236, then you can bet the party’s leaders will explore their options.

I would go even further than the author and add that, even if it looks like a candidate (Trump or anyone else) will get enough votes to win on the very first ballot, the party can still change the rules and nominate another person. That would be highly unwise, in my opinion, both in terms of the general and the future of that party, because that really would be ignoring the will of the majority of the people who bothered to vote in the GOP primaries.

I’ll also point out that my notion that parties should have a certain amount of power over their nominee selection process and not merely be the rubber-stamp of primary voters long predates the Trump candidacy. In this 2008 post I wrote the following:

I’ve never been convinced that nominees are best selected by popular vote, anyway. Primaries lock in a nominee too far in advance, and can’t reflect subsequent events closer to election time. They also favor demagogues or the passing candidate de jour, as well as dictating that Presidential office-seekers appeal to the most extreme wing of their Parties in primaries, and then tack back to the middle for the general elections.

“Favor demagogues.” Hmmm.

[NOTE: Also see this comment of mine.]

What happened to Trump in Wisconsin?

The New Neo Posted on by

On the face of it, the question seems like a no-brainer. What happened? As Edward Morrissey writes, he shot himself in the foot—dissing popular governor Scott Walker, and flubbing abortion questions—and ended up losing by 13 points, 35 to Cruz’s 48.

To shore up this argument of a Trump reversal in Wisconsin, Morrissey cites a poll from late January and one from late February in the state, the first of which had Trump leading by 6 and the second by 10. So the narrative seems to make sense—that is, until you actually look a bit deeper, when you find that something else might have been going on.

That “something else” is named Marco Rubio, who dropped out between those two polls and the primary, which meant that the race narrowed down to a 2 and a half person race (Kasich being the half) instead of three-person race (there were other candidates lower down in the Wisconsin polls, too, back in January and February, but I’ll ignore them for the sake of simplicity, and at that point Kasich was almost invisible). In fact, Trump actually received a higher percentage of votes in the primary than in either of those two polls, the first of which had showed him at 24 and the second at 30, with Rubio and then Cruz behind him. In the primary he got 35% of the vote.

That January poll with Trump at 24 also featured a Rubio/Cruz total of 34. The February one had them at a total of 39 to Trump’s 30. The remainder back then was made up of the other candidates (as I said, Kasich was barely a factor). So you see that what occurred was that only a very small portion of the vote of the candidates who dropped out subsequent to the polls went to Trump, and that accounted for his loss and for the magnitude of his loss.

This doesn’t invalidate what Morrissey wrote in terms of the possible reasons Trump failed to pick up the votes of the dropout candidates and close the deal. This is somewhat of a pattern of Trump’s though, not just a recent one in Wisconsin; the difference is that now enough candidates have dropped out to matter more. If you look at this poll from about a week before the primary—when it was just Cruz, Trump, and Kasich—you’ll find that Trump had achieved the 35% that he actually got during the primary, but Cruz was only one point higher, and Kasich at 19% (5 points more than he received). And this poll from about two weeks before the primary shows something very similar: Cruz 36.2, Trump 31.4, and Kasich almost at 20.8. It seems (if the polls were correct) that late-breakers most definitely went to Cruz.

As if this primary season weren’t enough…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the universe is full of black holes.

Probably. Maybe.

Supermassive black holes with masses of more than 10bn suns have previously been found at the heart of large galaxies located in dense clusters in the universe. But this is the first time astronomers have found such an object lurking at the centre of a large galaxy in a relatively empty area of the universe.

“We didn’t expect to see such a huge black hole in a small place,” said Professor Chung-Pei Ma, an author of the study from the University of California, Berkeley.

That, she added, opens up an intriguing possibility. With such galaxies more common than rich clusters, such supermassive black holes could be rife.

“What this is saying is that you don’t need these galaxy clusters to grow very massive black holes,” says Professor Poshak Gandhi of the University of Southampton, who was not involved in the study. “That throws a wrench in the works of our understanding of how these monster black holes form ”“ it throws the field wide open.”

I have to say I’m always assuming that the field is wide open.

Choosing—or rejecting—a candidate by his/her face

The New Neo Posted on by

People on the left and the right keep talking about Cruz’s unpleasant face. I’ve heard such discussions, I’ve read them, and you’ve probably heard and read them too. Perhaps you even agree that Cruz has a remarkably unpleasant face.

Oddly, fewer people are talking about Trump’s unpleasant face, but I think it’s the case that he’s got one.

But I don’t care much about either guy’s face. I have never chosen or rejected candidates on that basis; it seems bizarre to me. I’m not above commenting on looks; for example, I thought Rick Perry looked mighty sharp with his new glasses, but I didn’t support him politically on the basis of that. I don’t even think that most people choose or reject candidates on the basis of looks, but it does get factored in, and perhaps it matters more and more in this age of television, Facebook, and Twitter.

There have been many presidents whose looks I find odd, even off-putting in various ways: Nixon, Truman, LBJ, Carter (whose face seemed almost Alfred E. Neumanish to me). If I look at pictures of all the presidents, I find that the most handsome presidents were Franklin Pierce and Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK, and Reagan, and those first two are probably not winning any prizes from most people for anything else but their faces:

pierce

wilson-

On the other hand, you’d have to look long and hard before you’d find someone with a face as unattractive as Lincoln, considered by most people one of our greatest presidents. We’re already familiar with his mien, and register it as “LINCOLN” with all the attendant associations such as “great,” but if that were not true we might indeed find his face repellent.

And John Adams looks unimpressive or worse—rather weak—if you just look at his face without knowing a thing about his actual history and accomplishments:

adams1

Look at a page that has all the presidents’ portraits on it, and you’ll find them a rather odd bunch, actually.

For that matter, think about Churchill. Really think about Churchill. If you didn’t already know who he was, you’d probably think: what a strange, melting sort of face! What an unimpressive, pudgy body!:

churchill1

But as with Lincoln, all is forgiven with Churchill appearance-wise because we know of his eloquence, courage, and achievements. But his face itself when looked at objectively is quite strange, although it has a certain stubborn power.

There was no internet when Churchill or Lincoln were running for office. But there’s plenty of evidence that most people who saw Lincoln in the flesh at the time found him not just ugly, but surpassingly ugly, with some people (under the heading “extreme observations” at that link) making it clear that he was actually the ugliest man they ever saw, which I suppose is a sort of distinction. Lincoln himself often joked about his face, with this being typical:

After being called two-faced in a debate: “I leave it to my audience. If I had another face, do you think I’d wear this one?”

As for Cruz, the internet is rife with people writing about why his face unsettles them. Here’s one such piece:

I have rarely, if ever, seen a conventional smile from Senator Cruz. In a natural smile the corners of the mouth go up; these muscles we can control voluntarily as well. But muscles circling the eyes are strictly under involuntary control: they make the eyes narrow, forming crow’s feet at the outside corners. Even the Mona Lisa’s smile shows this. The eyes give away one’s game and help us tell forged from genuine smiles. Grandma may have told you to put on a happy face, but you can’t if it isn’t heartfelt.

No matter what the emotional coloring of Senator Cruz’s outward rhetoric is, his mouth typically tightens into the same straight line. If it deviates from this, then the corners of his mouth bend down, not upwards. The outside of his eyebrows bend down, too, when he emotes, something so atypical that it disturbs me. Typically a person’s eyebrows arch up…

Actually, I’ve seen plenty of eyebrows that turn down, as well as mouths, and it doesn’t really disturb me although it doesn’t attract me either. The bearers of these turned-down faces aren’t usually people running for office, though; for example, I found an actor named Kyle Chandler (never heard of him before) who definitely has down-sloping eyes and eyebrows:

kylechandler

And I’m not quite sure what to say about this picture of 20s movie star Clara Bow—except that, well, she bears a slight resemblance to Ted Cruz here:
clarabow

Quite a few websites suggest that it’s Ted Cruz’s smile that’s the problem—or rather, his supposed lack of a Duchenne smile. And if you look at a lot of photos of Criuz smiling, his smile does often look rather tight. But it’s not unlike that of his fellow Texan LBJ, and I don’t recall anyone mentioning a problem with LBJ’s smile at the time. There’s also an odd resemblance to the tight little smile of actress Joan Cusack, who is considered rather quirky and charming.

What I really think is the problem is that Cruz’s face looks too much like the classic mask of tragedy, which has the same down-sloping eyes and mouth:

tragedy

As I said, I’m neutral about Cruz’s face. The following is not one of the worst photos I could find of him—I think it’s actually one of the best—but it’s certainly the way he looks quite a bit of the time, and I see nothing wrong there:

cruz

Wisconsin: post-primary thoughts

The New Neo Posted on by

I feel a great sense of relief at the GOP results from Wisconsin, but of course this is just one state. If Trump had won a resounding victory there, though, I would have said that his chances of getting a majority of delegates on the first ballot at the convention were fairly good. Now he still could do it, but his chances are looking considerably worse.

I have also noticed that the Kasich-Trump-Cruz results at the moment look quite a bit like a Fibonacci Sequence, in this case 14/34/48. I haven’t a clue what that might mean, but I like it.

At first when I saw this article about the Trump campaign’s post-primary statement this evening I thought it might be some sort of joke. But it’s on too many websites to be a parody, although it reads like a parody. Sadly, it seems all too real:

Donald J. Trump withstood the onslaught of the establishment yet again. Lyin’ Ted Cruz had the Governor of Wisconsin, many conservative talk radio show hosts, and the entire party apparatus behind him. Not only was he propelled by the anti-Trump Super PAC’s spending countless millions of dollars on false advertising against Mr. Trump, but he was coordinating `with his own Super PAC’s (which is illegal) who totally control him. Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet”” he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump. We have total confidence that Mr. Trump will go on to win in New York, where he holds a substantial lead in all the polls, and beyond. Mr. Trump is the only candidate who can secure the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination and ultimately defeat Hillary Clinton, or whomever is the Democratic nominee, in order to Make America Great Again.

Trump has become a parody of himself, and that’s saying something.

It’s almost unnecessary to fisk that statement, but I’ll just point out that:

(1) plenty of conservative talk show hosts and media outlets love and support Trump and have given him far more air time than they have given Cruz

(2) neither Trump nor his campaign have offered a single particle of evidence for the very serious charge they have made that Cruz illegally coordinated with his own super PAC

(3) everyone who has followed Cruz’s career for years ought to be aware that he’s been detested by the establishment, and that those from the establishment who are backing him now are only doing so with their backs to the wall and in desperation at the prospect of Trump

(4) there is also no evidence for the claim that Trump is the only candidate who can “secure the delegates” needed to win the nomination, since the rules permit delegates voting as they wish if no one gets the nomination on the first ballot (but perhaps Trump is unaware of the rules?)

(5) there is not even a scintilla of evidence for the idea that Trump can beat Hillary Clinton, much less that he’s the only candidate who could do it

When you read that statement it’s hard not to conclude that Trump is a very small man. And I’m not talking about his height, the size of his hands, or the dimensions of the male member he likes to brag about. I’m talking about his character.

[NOTE: It isn’t relevant, really, but I’ll also point out that “whomever” in that last sentence is incorrect; it should be “whoever.” I’m rather sympathetic on that score, though, because it’s a tough rule and I’ve made errors of that sort myself.]

[ADDENDUM to NOTE: After ruminating on it some more, I have to say I think that “whomever” might be correct. That sort of confusion is why I said I was sympathetic on that score. In fact (and here’s a confession), although I’m generally pretty accurate on grammar, I have come to avoid sentences in which I have to make a tough choice between “whoever” and “whomever,” because I find the rule so difficult to apply correctly, although I’ve read the guidelines many times.]

Wisconsin primary thread

The New Neo Posted on by

As usual with these primaries, I am very anxious. This particular primary has been hyped as Extremely Important, maybe The Most Important One of All. I think that’s hyperbole, but it’s not all that far from the truth.

The polls in Wisconsin close at 8 PM Central Time.

Roger Stone, Trump supporter, issues a threat

The New Neo Posted on by

Roger Stone has a message for voters, and for delegates to the RNC [emphasis mine]:

If Trump does not run the table on the rest of the primaries and the caucuses, we’re looking at a very, very narrow path in which the kingmakers go all out to cheat, to steal, and to snatch this nomination from the candidate who is overwhelmingly selected by the voters, which is why I have urged Trump supporters: come to Cleveland. March on Cleveland. Join us in the Forest City. We’re going to have protests, demonstrations. We will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal. If you’re from Pennsylvania, we’ll tell you who the culprits are. We urge you to visit their hotel and find them. You have a right to discuss this if you voted in the Pennsylvania primary, for example, and your votes are being disallowed.

“Find them”—and do what to them? I can think of many possibilities, and no doubt they can, and the Trump voters can, too. But I think Stone’s main idea is to intimidate the delegates into voting Trump’s way.

Roger Stone is no longer Trump’s “top political advisor” (he either resigned or was fired, or both, last August). But he remains one of Trump’s closest personal friends and a firm supporter—in his own words, “the ultimate Trump loyalist”:

It’s hard to overstate just how close Trump and Stone have been over the years. Their professional and personal relationship goes back more than three decades.

They weren’t just “close”; Stone was a lobbyist for Trump’s casino interests for many years. But Stone has a much longer political profile than that; you have to read his entire Wiki entry to get the full flavor of it, but let’s just say he put the dirty in dirty tricks for many candidates (although some of the candidates he has worked for along the way have not been known for dirty tricks, such as Ronald Reagan, and it’s not clear if he did that sort of thing for them). Threatening delegates may be something new, though, even for Stone. Stone also wrote an entire book alleging that LBJ was behind the assassination of JFK, which puts Stone in the sort of conspiracy territory usually reserved for the fringe.

He also has been behind several of Trump’s many presidential runs that never really got off the ground:

In 1988, Stone wanted Trump to run for president and arranged for him to give a speech at the Portsmouth, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, which garnered enormous media coverage. Stone says some of his friends in the state organized a short-lived “Draft Trump” movement, but within a few weeks, Trump had determined he would forgo a run to focus on his business career.

Twelve years later, when Trump launched a presidential exploratory committee, Stone served as its chairman…

“Three years ago, I wanted him to run for president; I thought the timing was right,” Stone says. “He did look at it seriously; he looked at both the Republican nomination and he took a quick look at the possibility of running as a third-party candidate.”

In sum, Stone is not just a passing acquaintance for Trump; he appears to be his oldest and closest political adviser, even if he holds no official political position any more with the Trump campaign. This entire episode is an interesting exercise in what commenter “Eric” on this blog keeps mentioning—that Republicans need to be political activists using leftist methods in order to win. This idea of outing the room numbers of delegates at the GOP convention (plus, of course, the rhetoric Stone and Trump use that such delegates’ exercise of their right to vote freely at the convention if Trump doesn’t win by the rules of the first ballot represents “cheating” and/or “stealing”) is a classic leftist-type ploy. I don’t like it; I think it crosses the line from acceptable activism to dangerous demagoguery, intimidation, and threats.

Trump on making Mexico pay

The New Neo Posted on by

Donald Trump made a big announcement today about his plan to force Mexico to pay for the wall. You can see several articles about it, plus links to all sorts of commentary on it, here.

It’s a mouthful. But the gist of the proposal itself is this:

The proposal would jeopardize a stream of cash that many economists say is vital for Mexico’s struggling economy. But the feasibility of Trump’s plan is unclear both legally and politically, and also would test the bounds of a president’s executive powers in seeking to pressure another country.

In the memo, Trump said he would threaten to change a rule under the USA Patriot Act antiterrorism law to cut off a portion of the funds sent to Mexico through money transfers, commonly known as remittances. The threat would be withdrawn if Mexico made “a one-time payment of $5-10 billion” to pay for the border wall, he wrote…

Nearly $25 billion was sent home by Mexicans living abroad in 2015, mostly in the form of money transfers, according to the Mexican central bank. In his memo, Trump said that “the majority of that amount comes from illegal aliens.”

But that figure includes cash from around the world, not just the United States. In addition, a Government Accountability Office report in January said that it is difficult to track how much money illegal Mexican immigrants are sending versus those working legally in the United States…

The memo includes rationales for a number of potential intimidation tactics, including increased trade tariffs, the cancellation of visas, and higher fees for border-crossing cards.

The are constitutional problems inherent in this. There are legal problems inherent in it. There are economic problems and there are international relations problems. And—if this is the sort of thing you care about—there are also human problems.

Then there are problems that are merely ones of execution: will this even have the effect Trump says it will? And last but not least, there is the contradiction inherent in Trump’s saying he will both deport all (or nearly all) of the illegal immigrants in this country and he will simultaneously execute this plan to extract large payments from the Mexican government by threatening the transfer of money that these same illegal immigrants send home to Mexico while working here. I suppose the idea is that he will do this first, and then he’ll deport them all after they’ve served their purpose.

If you read that whole WaPo article—or the other commentary at the memeorandum link I gave—you’ll see that there are many many ways to criticize Trump’s proposal. To do so point by point would be to write something much longer than I’m prepared to do here, so I’ll just say follow the links for that, and let’s just focus on the very very practical. As someone in the comments section of the WaPo article wrote:

OR – Mexicans can remit money via ANY of the world’s other 193 countries. And THEY can remit it to Mexico for a few bucks.

OR – Mexicans can remit money home via Hawala – the ancient, global, trust-based, person-to-person, money transfer system.

OR – a new class of money smugglers can rise up to do it.

Seems reasonable to me. There’s a lot more here:

If the guy who picks tomatoes in the San Joaquin Valley can no longer send money home what will he do? Will he actually stop coming to the US to work? Or will he save the money up and take it home in cash? Or (my favorite) will he decide that the whole migrant worker life has become too uncertain and just bring his whole family to the US for good?

Is targeting wire transfers going to work? What stops an illegal from buying a pre-paid Visa/Mastercard and mailing it home? How about debit cards on US banks? PayPal accounts? Wouldn’t this spawn an unregulated market in moving cash to Mexico?

Is an (more) economically and politically unstable Mexico on our southern border likely to result in more or less illegal immigration? Is a destabilized Mexico a desirable thing from a US national security point of view?

That piece goes on to explain why threatening trade with Mexico would hurt American workers, and this article goes into that issue and others even further. After putting the plan into perspective as part of a Trump “extractive, neo-mercantilist worldview,” the author adds:

…[T]o “make America great again,” [Trump’s] willing to rethink and upend the key components of [US] indispensability: America’s intricate alliances, overseas military bases, and mutual defense pacts, plus the pillars of the post-World War II international system””NATO, the UN, free trade, the global nuclear nonproliferation regime””that the United States helped design…

In an economic model produced for The Washington Post, Moody’s assumed that Trump honored his campaign promises, imposing a 35-percent tariff on imports from Mexico and a 45-percent tariff on imports from China. The model found that if both those countries retaliated with tariffs on U.S. exports, unleashing a trade war, all three countries could fall into recession. American consumers would face higher-priced Mexican and Chinese goods. U.S. companies that sell goods and services to Mexico and China, or are otherwise integrated with the Mexican and Chinese economies, might be forced to lay off workers. The tumult could cause stock markets to plummet and economic growth in Europe to contract. Millions of American jobs could be lost, at least in the short term, while the country’s manufacturing sector scales up to meet the demand for lost imports.

Any of these measures””the remittance regulations, the visa fees, the trade wars””would deal a severe blow to the U.S.-Mexican alliance. The fulfillment of Trump’s related campaign pledges””the renegotiation of NAFTA, the deportation of unauthorized immigrants en masse””would only harden the blow. Coordination between the U.S. and Mexico on intelligence and law-enforcement activities at the border would suffer. America’s commercial ties with its second-largest export market and third-largest trading partner would fray.

As I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The submerged part of the iceberg is (at least in part) the instability and unpredictability of a Trump presidency and how it would affect our relations with other countries. A lot of people on the right have been critical of Obama’s foreign policy, but Obama has been a model of predictability compared to loose-cannon Trump, who proposes a re-ordering of America’s position in the world at least as great as the one Obama has tried to effect, if not more so. Here’s one theory about what might happen in a Trump presidency, and it seems rather plausible to me:

After his election, other countries will immediately hedge against the risk of abandonment. There will be massive uncertainty around America’s commitments. Would Trump defend the Baltics? Would he defend the Senkaku Islands [in the East China Sea]? Or Saudi Arabia? Some nations will give in to China, Russia and Iran. Others, like Japan, will push back, perhaps by acquiring nuclear weapons. Trump may well see such uncertainty as a positive. Putting everything in play would give him great leverage. But by undoing the work of Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, it would be the end of the American era.

[NOTE: Although this isn’t really part of the Mexican issue, it’s related to the bigger picture, and is also worth reading. It’s about Trump’s proposal to eliminate the national debt. I’m no whiz at economics, but I’m beginning to wonder whether Trump has any grounding in macroeconomics as opposed to microeconomics.]

More from Klemperer

The New Neo Posted on by

Every now and then I’ve offered excerpts from the fascinating WWII-era memoirs of Victor Klemperer (see this for one of them, as well as an explanation of who Klemperer was). The following quotes are from his I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1933-1941.

March 20, 1938:

The last few weeks have been the most wretched of our life so far.

The immense act of violence of the annexation of Austria, the immense increase in power both internally and externally, the defenseless trembling fear of England, France, etc. We shall not live to see the end of the Third Reich. The flags have been waving for eight days, since yesterday a broad yellow handbill with the Star of David has been stuck to every post of our fence: Jew. Warning against the unflagged plague barracks. Der Sturmer has dug up its usual ritual murder I would truly not be surprised if next I were to find the body of a child in the garden.

June 19, 1942

In Shaw’s Saint Joan there is a wild hunter of heretics, who breaks down in despair when he sees Joan burning. “I did not know…!” He was unable to imagine the horror. Until now I had found our situation just as literally unimaginable: I had always been told about being beaten and spat upon, of trembling at the sound of a car, at every ring of the door, of disappearing and not coming back again—I had not known it. Now I know it, now the dread is always inside me, deadened for a couple of hours or become habitual or paralyzed by, “So far things have always turned out well in the end!” and then alive and at one’s throat again. It’s a point of difference between Eva and myself. She says to her it was nothing new or surprising; she had heard it all a hundred times before. I: but only now am I experiencing it; my imagination or my altruism were not strong enough to experience it only through others.—I compare this dread of death with that in the field [Klemperer had served in WWI]. This here is a thousand times more horrible. There it was at worst “the field of honor,” there I was certain of every assistance were I to be wounded. Now—these horrible disappearances. What became of Friedheim? What happened to him, when he was dragged out of here? What happened in prison? How did he die? Snuffed out; drowned in the dirt after agonies. It is a thousand, a thousand times more horrible than all my fear in 1915.—And always being afraid, always running to the window, in case a car…

SCOTUS renders unanimous decision

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s unusual right there, isn’t it? Here’s the decision:

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled against challengers seeking to change the long-held interpretation of the principle of one person, one vote. Siding with a lower court, the 8-member high court held that total population could be used to draw electoral districts.

The decision for the case, Evenwel v. Abbott, was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas each filed concurring opinions.

“Appellants have shown no reason for the Court to disturb this longstanding use of total population,” Ginsburg wrote.

The challengers had argued the use of total population — which includes non-citizens, but also children and disenfranchise prisoners — to draw districts was unconstitutional because it diluted the political power of eligible voters.

In this case—unlike other recent cases—the absence of Justice Scalia doesn’t appear to have changed anything.

Today’s Trump roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump doesn’t seem to quite understand the nomination process—unless, of course, he “misspoke” again. But I think that words—especially ad-libbed words like the following from Trump—can reveal what’s in/on a person’s mind better than scripted ones, and Trump has used a very interesting phrase:

“[John] Kasich shouldn’t be allowed to run,” he said. “Look, under the grounds that Rand Paul could’ve stayed in, and he had nothing. Marco Rubio could’ve stayed in. Jeb Bush could’ve stayed in. They all could’ve stayed.” Trump said the Ohio governor is “1-for-29,” and the only thing he “barely” won was his home state. “If I spent one more day in Ohio, I would’ve beat him,” he said. So far, 32 states have held Republican primaries and caucuses.

During his visit with Republican National Committee members last week, Trump says he brought up Kasich, asking, “Why is a guy allowed to run, all he’s doing is he goes from place to place and loses and he keeps running.”

In case it’s not clear, it’s the word “allowed” that’s the troubling one. Trump certainly is well within his rights to question Kasich’s motives for continuing to run and/or to ask whether Kasich should continue to run, but “allowed”?

Trump sells himself as a dealmaker extraordinaire who’s also a quick learner and problem-solver, who hires only the best people. Yet he doesn’t seem to have mastered (or even learned much about) the process of amassing delegates to the RNC. He may not like the way it’s done, and you may not like the way it’s done, but the phenomenon is an integral part of the long haul towards winning a nomination.

If you aren’t sick of the topic and you want to read even more about Donald Trump’s campaign, go here. It’s actually a pretty interesting article, describing how (supposedly) his campaign is run and by whom it is run (mostly Trump, with the help of some people who haven’t done much campaign-running before, which may or may not be a good thing).

I thought that this passage (if true, which is a rather large caveat) could shed some light as to why Fox might have become so Trump-friendly in recent months:

During Lewis’s severance negotiations, Lewis hired Judd Burstein, a powerhouse litigator, and claimed he had “bombs” that would destroy Ailes and Fox News. That’s when Trump got involved.

“When Roger was having problems, he didn’t call 97 people, he called me,” Trump said. Burstein, it turned out, had worked for Trump briefly in the ’90s, and Ailes asked Trump to mediate. Trump ran the negotiations out of his office at Trump Tower. “Roger had lawyers, very expensive lawyers, and they couldn’t do anything. I solved the problem.” Fox paid Lewis millions to go away quietly, and Trump, I’m told, learned everything Lewis had planned to leak. If Ailes ever truly went to war against Trump, Trump would have the arsenal to launch a retaliatory strike.

The article is full of interesting tidbits like that, and a few of them may even be true. Who knows?

Being freed doesn’t end the suffering for the kidnapped girls of Boko Haram

The New Neo Posted on by

There are tragedies so deep, suffering so vast, that it’s hard to know what to say in the face of them. Certainly it’s hard to know what to do, even for those who try to help. Such is the case in the plight of the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, whose vale of tears does not end with their liberation.

These are young women and in many cases young girls who were initially subjected to the trauma of kidnapping.

Then they were raped over and over again, by many men or by men who called themselves their husbands.

Who were kept prisoner, harangued, indoctrinated, and often became pregnant and bore the children of their captors.

For them, even the process of being freed was devastating, violent and sometimes resulted in the death of some of the captives during the melee.

Now that they are free, they are further restricted—to special camps run by the Nigerian army—and ostracized from society.

Perhaps worst of all, their present treatment makes a certain amount of sense, because they had been brainwashed into Boko Haram’s ways at an early age and there is the possibility that a recent uptick in the number of female suicide bombers in Nigeria may be at the hands of some of the ex-Boko-Haram hostages. So the fear is that it’s very difficult to tell who among the ex-hostages would be the enemy and who would not.

It’s a terrible story of human suffering at the hands of a malignant force (Islamic terrorism of the Nigerian variety), and the efforts to alleviate the situation for the girls/women have been relatively futile:

Once a week, Halima and Hamsatu attend group therapy sessions in a tent that says “Safe Place for Women and Girls.”

There they are known as “the sisters” because of how close they’ve become. They gather in a circle on the floor with about a dozen other women. The counselor repeats a few lines during each meeting. Hamsatu and Halima wait quietly for them, wishing they were true.

“What has gone has gone.”

“You are safe now.”

“You are secure now.”

Maybe some day these girls/women will actually feel safe. I wouldn’t bet on it. Right now their stories seem even sadder than those of the three women kidnapped, tortured, raped, and psychologically abused by Ariel Castro, because for the most part they don’t have loving homes or society to return to and are considered to have been shamed by their rapes, as well as feared for their potential violence.

Why don’t they have loving homes to return to? All too often their families were murdered by Boko Haram, too.

[NOTE: As if that weren’t terrible enough, here’s another story about a group of children who were held by Boko Haram and by the time they were rescued they had forgotten their native tongue, their names, and their histories.]