As always, Donald Trump finds himself in a controvery. This time, he suggested that 2nd amendment supporters will be able to stop the nomination of Supreme Court justices that aren’t supporters themselves:
Here, we have a temporal language problem. Trump speaks, usually, in an epenthetic way, that is to say he inserts small clauses in phrases that have nothing to do with the current phrase. He does this to mitigate the effect of phrases that might be offensive or to remind us that he’s the greatest man in the world (that’s clearly false, so he has to remind us), but on this occasion, he created a temporal incongruence. Here’s the full phrase:
“If she gets to pick her juges, nothing you can do, folks, although the 2nd amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
When Trump states the clause nothing you can do, he uses the present tense in an ambiguous way. It can describe either the present tense or the future tense. What determines the tense is the tense of the phrase in which the clause is found: If she gets to pick her juges. This clause can only mean the future, because she is completely incapable of picking a justice unless she wins the presidency in the future. This marks the rest of the utterance as in the future, after the election, including the clause nothing you can do. As such, there’s only one interpretation: Trump suggests that someone assassinate, with a gun, either the president or the judges, but Trump says that the clause is linked to that which would have happened before the election:
Media desperate to distract from Clinton's anti-2A stance. I said pro-2A citizens must organize and get out vote to save our Constitution!
I have no doubte that that’s what Trump meant, but the way in which he said it renders a different meaning. The problem isn’t deciding if he was really promoting the assassination of Clinton or the justices, as the media is debating, it’s deciding if he endangered these people, to which I respond: yes, he doesn’t reflect on what he says, ever, and that is very very dangerous as a president.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a post due to my studies, but I had the chance to write one for Astheure.com recently, on the elections in Louisiana:
None of the candidates for governor of Louisiana speak French, that is. Well, Scott Angelle admits that he speaks it a bit (or maybe he’s just ashamed?), but the rest are absolutely anglophone, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t also support French in the state. So, I tried to figure out their histories and positions concerning French.
Scott Angelle has put out an ad in which he speaks French:
I sent Mr. Angelle, as well as others, an e-mail asking some question about his position, but I only received a response from John Bel Edwards, or rather, from his aide:
This is MP Wray with the JBE campaign. John Bel is the only candidate with a record of supporting riding for programs like CODIFIL and French immersion programs in public schools when their funding was threatened. John Bel went toe to toe with Governor Jindal to support his French speaking colleagues in the legislature. As you are well aware, we have a sordid past that includes the suppression of the French language. We must preserve and grow this unique cultural heritage and never take it for granted. JBE has taken the votes that show he doesn’t just give this issue lip service.
And again another response after more questions about what he will do specifically:
Reinvesting in CODOFIL and our public schools will allow for the investment needed to promote the teaching of French. JBE is responsible for negotiating a quarter of a billion in funding increases for k-12 over the objections of Bobby Jindal and working with Acadiana legislators to restore CODOFIL funding.
We also have to reinvest in our museums in the Secretary of State’s office to ensure that preservation of the history of French in Louisiana remains a top priority. JBE has set out how he will deal with structural budget problems in order to be able to make these investments and find the revenue.
As for David Vitter, there’s nothing to say. Likewise for Jay Dardenne, who is mentioned in in an article on NOLA Française where the links are broken. Lets hope that the links to French won’t be broken by the next governor.
UPDATE:
There are other elections, too. Here’s what the candidates for Lieutenant Governor say about CODOFIL, and French in general. It seems to me that, while two of these candidates respond in French, they aren’t too fluent. In any case:
Thanks to Brad Nation, administrator of the Facebook Group Cajun French Vitrual Table Française, I have other information to share about Scott Angelle, candidate for governor. Mr. Nation contacted him to find out Mr. Angelle’s position in relation to French in Louisiana. Here is what he received as a response:
Scott is an avid supporter of our French culture and heritage here in Louisiana. He strongly believes in protecting and preserving the French language. Scott even speaks some Cajun French himself. He often uses the phrase pour moi c’est la Louisiane chaque fois tout le temps [for me it’s Louisiana each time all the time] as he encourages the people of Louisiana that he is solely focused on them and that our state has its greatest days ahead of us. Scott will always preserve our history and our diversity here in Louisiana. -Jessica Ragusa, Communications Director
We were protesting against a noise ordinance which led us right into city hall and then into the council chamber where the musicians played a funeral dirge then The Tremé Song by John Boutté. (Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to save that video.)
This is an important issue for the people of New Orleans. If you want to learn more, visit maccno.com.
The election is five days away and, while I would hope that everyone who’s voting has figured out where the candidates stand on the issues, I’m going to post this video to make it perfectly clear, to those who are interested, where Obama stands. This was broadcast over six or so major stations last night. It’s a thirty minute long “infomercial” and it’s an unprecedented move for a presidential candidate. The price tag on this is some three to five million dollars which pretty much no candidate ever has at this point in the race. He had this money because he’s had an enormous amount of donations. His average donation is around $100. Last month he raised $150,000,000 that way. That’s a lot of Americans handing over some hard earned cash for something they believe in. That’s not to say that anyone should vote for him because his numbers are impressive. No one wants an election to be bought. Those numbers should tell you that maybe there’s something going on with this guy that’s special though. Anyway, here it is:
Sarah Palin did and interview with Brian Williams recently, with McCain by her side of course, and was asked an interesting question:
Now obviously she doesn’t condone abortion clinic bombers but it’s a little ridiculous that she couldn’t call them terrorists. Why couldn’t she say the word? Is she associated with an abortion clinic bomber? Is she afraid of offending the abortion clinic bomber crowd? Is she just an idiot? The answer is probably the last suggestion there but that whole little conversation is interesting regardless.
Another interesting campaign story is the one about a girl who was “attacked by a big black man who carved the letter ‘B’ into her cheek”. This didn’t actually happen but guess who reported it anyway?
This was a McCain campaign volunteer who has obviously gone off the deep end either in her support for McCain or her hatred of black people. Seriously, she didn’t have to say that this imaginary attacker was a black guy but she did. That could have had some serious implications for the racial divide in that city and it would have been based on a lie. I kind of hope that she cut that deep enough into her face that she’ll be stuck with a ‘B’ on her cheek for the rest of her life. It would be like a cooler real life version of the Scarlett Letter where you don’t have to feel sympathy for the person branded.
Lastly, I got my sample ballot yesterday and I would like to point out to everyone that we are voting for more than just the president on November 4th. Just to make things easy on anyone who’s lazy but might have some inclination towards voting, here are some quick links to find out about these people.
Personally, I’m going for Lautenberg. Zimmer has some bad ideas on how prisons should be run like taking away all luxuries from the prisoners to save money. That sounds fine until you realize how much more dangerous a prison becomes when you don’t have some form of entertainment to keep those guys and gals docile. I know this because my dad runs a prison. He also seems somewhat along the lines of a neo-conservative. Lautenberg is a little more liberal than I like but he’s better than Zimmer, to me, by far. And Jeff Boss is just some crazy truther who thinks people in Mexico have tried to kill him to shut him up.
Personally, I’m going Kurkowski. LoBiondo is the incumbent and the last time I looked at his record he was pretty much a mirror image of Bush. He’s a partisan hack. The only thing I know of that he’s stood his own ground on is the bail out bill which he voted against but it’s questionable whether that was the best way to vote or not. In this case I’m kind of voting against LoBiondo instead of for Kurkowski. Kurkowski was a school teacher and is a small business owner and doesn’t have much to say but at least he’s not a Bush clone. The other three couldn’t even be bothered to make a proper web site that says anything about their ideas so I can’t be bothered to vote for them.
There isn’t much info on these two other than their resumes and I like Hallett’s more. He’s been in a secret service agent, a CIA agent, and a police officer. He also sounds level headed. Schaffer has just been a long time Ocean City cop. I trust the guy with the diverse background over the guy who’s biggest problem for the last 25 years has been rounding up underage drinkers. Also, I was told that Schaffer, while walking the streets campaigning, found a little girl and told her to bring his flyer up to someone’s door instead of doing it himself. Apparently this little girl didn’t have a clue what she was doing or who the guy was. That just sounds weird.
For Lower Township Mayor:
Harvey roach
Glenn Douglass
Michael Beck
There’s hardly any info on these three. I’m leaning towards Beck because of some vague idea of his positions but I’m still unsure about this one. Check them out for yourself.
That’s the low-down though. If you’re voting on the 4th for president and don’t want to leave those other parts blank or just check off who you want based on party then it might be worth looking into these guys. It doesn’t take very long, honest.
There has been a lot of talk about ACORN. This is an nationwide organization that aims to register low income people and minorities to vote. Recently it’s been brought to the attention of the national media that in some areas ACORN has turned in a lot of fake registrations. You can hear daily from the Republicans about how this is voter fraud and evidence that Obama is trying to steal the election. It’s not.
First of all, the most important point, Obama has not used ACORN at all during the general election.
Now that that’s out of the way, there are very good reasons why this has become such an issue. ACORN was paying people by how many registrations they turned in. The natural reaction for some would be to write up a bunch of fake registrations and get a lot of money for no work. These people have, for the most part, been fired. The registrations they turned in were flagged by ACORN as being fake. In some states every registration collected must be turned in to the election board so that the board can be in charge of deciding if something is fake or not. ACORN followed this rule and sent the bad registrations with the good and flagged each to be clear. That’s it. That’s the whole situation. Now, somehow, ACORN is destroying democracy and they’re becoming a focal point of the election. Remember those issue things? Yeah, all that stuff about policy and the real problems our country is facing? The GOP would apparently like you to ignore those things and focus on manufactured crap like this ACORN “issue”.
Also, for the record, this isn’t voter fraud. Voter fraud would be someone actually showing up and voting illegally. Brave New Films has put out a video that gives a good explanation for all this. They get into stuff about how Republicans want voter turn out to be low, and I’m sure there are some that do, but that may be the unfair part of this video. Anyway, watch.
Honestly, I’m getting tired of hearing only three words from this five minute long conversation. It seems everywhere I turn there’s someone repeating the phrase “spread the wealth” as if those were the only words Obama said to Joe Wurzelbacher from Ohio. This is usually followed by claims that Obama is a socialist, a communist, and wants to punish successful people. This even sometimes flows into claims that Obama is a terrorist, un-American, and isn’t even a natural-born US citizen.
The level of xenophobia lately is crazy. In the news I’ve seen anything from a man cackling as he shows a camera his stuffed monkey with an Obama hat that he calls “Little Hussein” to someone’s Halloween decorations that include a lynched ghost with “Obama” written on it as well as “Husain” (yes, it was spelled wrong). There is such a huge amount of disinformation, racism, fear, and just plain hate lately that I wouldn’t even know where to begin to start correcting some of it so I guess I’ll just correct one thing.
Here is the entire “Joe the Plumber” conversation.
And before you get swept away in all the non-sense propaganda out there, take at least one look at FactCheck.org. Seriously, don’t be stupid.
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