The sword of truth.

After Friday’s excoriation of the poor shlub who wrote the Daniel Holtzclaw piece, I feel the need for some balance. Check out the first couple grafs of this Jeffrey Toobin piece on Antonin Scalia:

Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor. The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward; their words both anticipated and helped shape the nation that the United States was becoming. Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward.

His revulsion toward homosexuality, a touchstone of his world view, appeared straight out of his sheltered, nineteen-forties boyhood. When, in 2003, the Court ruled that gay people could no longer be thrown in prison for having consensual sex, Scalia dissented, and wrote, “Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.” He went on, “Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a life style that they believe to be immoral and destructive.”

You know what I like about that? There’s not a whiff of equivocation in any part of it, just simple declarative sentences, dropping like truth bombs, ending with a long passage written by the deceased himself, and not that long ago, underlining just how retrograde his opinions were. Were. He’s dead. Let’s move forward. So many writers are afraid, of blowback, of Twitter, of whatever, that they can’t even express a clear opinion anymore. It’s not that I think this, but that I really think this — you can find that sentence in a dozen columns published today. If you’re good, no one would get confused in the first place.

The essay doesn’t lose steam — and isn’t that long, I should add — but if I may quote one more paragraph, or portion of it:

Not long ago, Scalia told an interviewer that he had cancelled his subscription to the Washington Post and received his news from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times (owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church), and conservative talk radio. In this, as in his jurisprudence, he showed that he lived within the sealed bubble of contemporary conservative thought.

And this man, I remind you, is considered a towering intellectual. He got his news from Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, et al. Good luck with that level of intellectualism, guys.

Whew, that felt good to read.

So, we had ourselves a lovely weekend at my latitude, two days back-to-back with temperatures in the 60s. I ran errands on my bike, smelled the breeze, did some recreational reading, attended a dinner party and otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves. Of course, because I am a homeowner, I looked at the considerably colder forecast for the coming week and thought, “Good thing I got most of the dog poop picked up, because the snow’s going to cover it all back up again.” Lord Grantham never had this problem.

I hope I can be one of those people who looks forward as I get older. Endless nostalgia is a truly destructive attitude to carry into life. As anyone who reads Bob Greene could tell you.

The rest of the weekend was not so great in Michigan, as current events will demonstrate. My friend and former student Ryan had to roll out for K’zoo Sunday morning. As he was leaving, his girlfriend informed him he would be missing her breakfast tacos, “which only makes me hate this fucking loser even more,” he said.

But he filed a good story. Best detail:

Michael Arney, a local radio reporter, said he attended Comstock high school in Kalamazoo with Dalton, who was now, he said, the third murder suspect from his 1989 graduating class.

The delamination of the less-well-educated white American male? Or coincidence? You tell me.

Have a good weekend, all.

Posted at 12:22 am in Current events, Media |
 

41 responses to “The sword of truth.”

  1. MichaelG said on February 22, 2016 at 1:09 am

    Toobin’s article was excellent.

    In thinking about Scalia’s “originalism” I can’t help but wonder if the guys whom a lot of people call the “framers” didn’t consider that other people would be looking at and referring to and relying upon their work in at least the foreseeable future. Maybe they would have even thought that people would have looked at the constitution fifty or a hundred years up the road. I mean they were that kind of thinkers. The more I look at it the more I think that Scalia’s viewpoint as an “originalist” was constructed as a cover for his personal opinions which I won’t attempt to characterize.

    Looking forward is not so hard. Thinking about where one will be when forward arrives is more difficult. There’s a genuine question as to whether I will be around for the next inauguration or even the election. I think not so much of nostalgia as of the present and my hopes for the immediate future. For example, I’ve scheduled a cruise for mid-April and hope I’ll be able to make it. After all, I was obliged to cancel my Cuba trip in December. No, nostalgia isn’t my problem.

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  2. Brandon said on February 22, 2016 at 1:40 am

    Endless nostalgia is a truly destructive attitude to carry into life.

    The key word is endless. Living in the past isn’t good. Neither is completely shunning it.

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  3. Dexter said on February 22, 2016 at 1:53 am

    As I read today’s post, I saw Ronald Wilson Reagan’s smirking smug slack-jawed face in the background as Scalia was sworn in. He had gotten his boy alright…another big chunk of the legacy of Reagan. Yes, let’s move forward, away from people like Scalia, and hopefully Cruz. Did you watch John Oliver? He had a bit showing Cruz and other repuggs lying about last-year nominations and presidential year nominations not happening…Oliver’s show revealed five lies right off the top, lies easily proven by two clicks to the internet.

    Not a Sprint Series Nascar fan here, but I do watch one race a year, the Daytona 500. I’m guessing less than 10% of nallers give two shits, but it is worth it to watch the finish. TV guys said the margin at the finish line was .01 second, but it was really about .00001 second…maybe four inches separating first and second place.

    So yeah, sort of early, but I felt Bernie had to win Nevada, and he did not. I now anticipate a Hillary steamroll to the nomination. Those super delegates…how can Bernie get around those Clinton commitments?

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  4. Dexter said on February 22, 2016 at 2:22 am

    …grabbed from Zorn’s FB page
    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154073693630039&set=a.10151933455305039.1073741825.564780038&type=3

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  5. Sherri said on February 22, 2016 at 3:19 am

    Scalia et al are not nostalgic, they’re lazy. They’re unhappy that the rest of us won’t be quiet and let them pretend that we don’t matter.

    There are two convicted murderers in my 1980 graduating class, and another convicted of vehicular manslaughter. That I know about.

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  6. ROGirl said on February 22, 2016 at 5:18 am

    I read the New Yorker article over the weekend (was a long-time subscriber, still dip in without having to pile up stacks in the basement) and came to the same conclusion about the message. Here’s another gem from it, via an unlikely source:

    During the oral argument of a challenge to a California law that required, among other things, warning labels on violent video games, Justice Samuel Alito interrupted Scalia’s harangue of a lawyer by quipping, “I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Did he enjoy them?”

    Random shooters with guns? Kalamazoo, Paris, San Bernardino, Sandy Hook, etc.

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  7. Suzanne said on February 22, 2016 at 6:34 am

    I did read some interesting stat over the weekend (where? I do not remember. Five thirty eight maybe) that broke down who supports which candidate by demographic percentages. Most were pretty well spread out but Trump had a yuuge percentage of those with only a high school education or less. Way higher percentage than any other candidate.

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  8. alex said on February 22, 2016 at 6:43 am

    That was refreshing. I’ve gotten plenty tired of reading the obligatory yada yada about Scalia’s towering intellect, inserted like a boilerplate disclaimer in every story that otherwise shows that he was a closed-minded petulant little prick. For all of his supposed candle power, he was sorely lacking in wisdom, insight or empathy. He was weaselly, which can be admirable in its own right, but shouldn’t be confused with intellect.

    As Dilbert so famously said, When did ignorance become a point of view?

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  9. adrianne said on February 22, 2016 at 6:50 am

    Jeffrey Toobin’s article was a blast of honesty amid all the blather about Nino and his great legal mind. One telling detail from it was than Rehnquist rarely gave him big constitutional opinions to write, knowing that he would alienate Sandra Day O’Connor and others. Now, can we stop reading about him?

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  10. beb said on February 22, 2016 at 8:24 am

    The hardest job of any President or Vice-President has to be eulogizing someone they consider to be a total ass.

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  11. Peter said on February 22, 2016 at 9:25 am

    Amen to that Beb. What I wouldn’t give to have that spawn of Satan Dick Cheney expire after the general elections and Obama can let loose with what he really thinks of the guy.

    While repugnant, perhaps Obama should appoint Ted Cruz to the court. He’s smart, offensive, talks a lot, what the Senate wouldn’t do to get rid of him – other than his troglodyte views, what’s not to like?

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  12. Icarus said on February 22, 2016 at 10:09 am

    Interesting point by Ed of Gin & Tacos

    “Few Americans seem capable of agreeing upon the point at which forms of expression become harmful to others, but there is more or less unanimous agreement that most of us need to grow thicker skin.

    Except cops. Cops can react like histrionic preteens to the slightest criticism without anyone telling them to Grow a Pair or stop Overreacting or Man Up or Quit Whining or any of the other comment section favorites. ”

    http://www.ginandtacos.com/2016/02/22/wuss-epidemic/#comments

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    • nancy said on February 22, 2016 at 11:02 am

      I read this this morning and had the same thought: Wish I’d written this.

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  13. brian stouder said on February 22, 2016 at 10:12 am

    That would be fascinating.

    Raphael would have to decide whether to be forever tainted by the hand of the Kenyan Usurper, and the Donald would say “he’s STILL not a citizen!” (not that it would matter), and the talk radio enforcers of ideological purity would fall down a spiral-staircase of mirrors – wondering WHICH conspiracy theory to subscribe to

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  14. Suzanne said on February 22, 2016 at 10:25 am

    Peter @ 11. I’ve thought that, too, just because of the entertainment factor of watching the head explosions of people who claim to be conservative and have said over and over that they WILL not approve any Supreme Court nominee made by Obama because, of course, liberal!! The down side is that we could get stuck with TC as a justice and he’s not an old man.

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  15. alex said on February 22, 2016 at 11:35 am

    Favorite line in the comments at Gin and Tacos:

    As far as the always erroneous use of “grow a pair,” its best to follow Betty White’s advice: “Why do people say ‘grow some balls’? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”

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  16. brian stouder said on February 22, 2016 at 11:52 am

    Talk about your ‘sword(s) of truth’!

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  17. Julie Robinson said on February 22, 2016 at 12:10 pm

    Betty has reached an age where she’s allowed to speak truth.

    The R’s have always reminded me of my high school’s Student Council, populated by ambitious and unpopular idiots. That Scalia was one is hardly surprising.

    And now, to change the subject, a health care rant about why we need a single payer system. Our insurance company is based here in the Fort, and I learned firsthand that outside the area, you’re just screwed.

    When I got sick on vacation last week I called to find an urgent care center that would be covered, was emailed 18 names, and began a long quest that ended when the first nine contacted did not, in fact, accept our insurance. Others were only surgery centers, never answered their phone, or told us after we’d waited half an hour that our insurance was no good. After we missed one place we doubled back only to discover it’s now a tire center.

    In a moment of desperation I called my home doctor and begged for antibiotics. His nurse said no, even though he’s treated me for this three times before. It put quite a damper on the trip for me, and worried my poor family, who remember me landing in the hospital during an earlier bout.

    So, the moral of the story is, if you have a certain three-initial insurance, do not get sick out of town.

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  18. Deborah said on February 22, 2016 at 12:18 pm

    This is my last day in Santa Fe for awhile. It’s always hectic trying to get everything wrapped up and then I have to look forward to a travel day tomorrow, unfortunately. I take the train and then a bus to the airport in Albuquerque.

    We close on our new place in Chicago on Thursday and I haven’t even seen it yet, except for pictures. It’s in another building across the street from the one we are in, also designed by Mies Van der Rohe, which means nothing except to architects. This one was built in the late 40s. We won’t be moving until the end of April because we are doing some work in the unit. It currently has mirrors on every single wall, which we are tearing out, not just the mirrors but the interior walls as well. It’s on a highish mid level floor and has a great view of the lake and the city, or so I’m told. The unit was renovated in the early 80s by a guy who apparently liked to look at himself. He owned a hair salon somewhere in the city, so I guess he was used to lots of mirrors everywhere. Anyway, lots and lots to do.

    MichealG, I’m thinking about you and hope for the best in all you are facing.

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  19. Deborah said on February 22, 2016 at 12:24 pm

    I will add after seeing Julie’s comment about getting sick out of town. I had a similar experience before turning 65 and getting Medicare, I had worthless insurance that I couldn’t use in New Mexico at all. I had to pay through the nose when I had to go to the Dr here once.

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  20. Bitter Scribe said on February 22, 2016 at 12:28 pm

    The delamination of the less-well-educated white American male?

    Years ago, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote an essay, whose title I wish I could recall (it was something like “Marginal Men”), on how working class young white men were getting marginalized and lashing out, often by committing crimes against young women. I guess Trump is channeling some of that rage.

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  21. brian stouder said on February 22, 2016 at 12:40 pm

    One reason I simply will not believe Trump can possibly win the Presidency of the United States, is that those marginal men cannot possibly comprise an nation-wide electoral majority, right?

    Trump’s very 1920’s (Klan Indiana) dust-up with the Pope aside, his utter dismissal of the war-time valor and genuine, timeless heroism of John McCain simply has to be a central point to hit, for his Democratic opponent in the fall, yes?

    And indeed – Trump’s endless support for money-grabbing snake-oil salesmen like Wounded Warriors is a button that needs to be pushed again and again (beginning at the right moment, and then relentlessly, to the end)

    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/us/wounded-warrior-project-spends-lavishly-on-itself-ex-employees-say.html?_r=0

    An excerpt:

    After Jesse Longoria recovered from a roadside bomb blast that nearly killed him in Iraq, he got a job with the organization training veterans to help other veterans.

    “I loved it,” the former Marine sniper said. “By giving back, I was helping myself and helping other vets.”

    In 2012, after he had been working for the charity about a year, he had to have his right arm amputated because of lingering damage from Iraq.

    Soon after the amputation, he said, he was racked by haunting emotions from Iraq and checked himself into suicide watch at a psychiatric ward.

    A week later, he was back at work when a fistfight broke out between veteran mentors who had been drinking after one of his training sessions. He was not in the room at the time but was held responsible for the fight, his boss at the time, Mr. Chick, said in an interview.

    Mr. Chick’s own supervisor told him to fire Mr. Longoria. Mr. Chick said he refused, but was ordered by his boss to write an email recommending the firing. “He said you better do this or you are going to look disloyal to the organization,” Mr. Chick said. “It was a very coercive conversation.”

    The Wounded Warrior Project said Mr. Longoria was terminated at Mr. Chick’s recommendation. The organization fired Mr. Chick later the same day for insubordination.

    Mr. Longoria said he was offered money in exchange for signing a nondisclosure agreement, but refused. Other former employees said they had signed such forms, and could not speak.

    Fully fund the VA, and raise my taxes, and forward we go.

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  22. St Bitch said on February 22, 2016 at 1:15 pm

    I made the mistake this morning of handing a pair of small peachy-rose ceramic post earings across the dining table to my mother just after she’d finished eating her breakfast and was obediently swallowing her daily slew of multi-colored pills. I’d found the earings in my coin purse where I’d put them three Sundays ago when we spent 5 hours in the ER having her x-rayed and cat-scanned after a fall. She was delighted to see those missing baubles again, and I suggested she put them in her pocket before directing my eyes and thoughts back here. A few blinks later I heard her murmuring something about, “…I guess I’m supposed to swallow them whole” , as she rolled the earings around on her placemat. It took a few beats to realize she wasn’t joking…one of the post backs had already gone down the hatch!

    So it goes here in Dementialand…and such is my excuse for addressing threads played out previously…

    First of all, 4dbirds, Deborah and family, I’m so sorry for your loss!

    Next, Basset and Deborah, the Olympic Penninsula is gorgeous…a short ferry ride across the Puget Sound with many wildlife parks and refuges. I used to visit a lobo wolf sanctuary there when I lived in Seattle, but I don’t believe it still exists. Also, I sort of lived (more like hung out) on Lopez Island off and on during that era, as well as sailed around the Strait of Juan de Fuca in a 42-foot Ketch for a week one summer. As a pampered guest with nothing to do but loll about and drink in the scenery, it was like being lapped by 50 shades of blue.

    I like Hillary’s shantung silklike jewel tone tunics, although the NH gold clashed with her hair and didn’t flatter her complexion. The Nevada red was fine.

    Obama will not squander this swan song gift that has been dropped in his lap. I’m curious to see what candidate he finds that will not only appease, but lure in the right wing, while satisfying the left. It’s all about balance. I don’t doubt span of his wings.

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  23. beb said on February 22, 2016 at 1:20 pm

    There was never a time in the US when you could take a poke at someone who called you a bad name. Certainly not among Blacks, who would be lynched. Nor among the Italian, Greeks, Mexicans, Chinese, First Americans, or Irish. Whites could slander those races as much as they pleased but not vice versa. The whining of the cops is particularly ridiculous because theirs is a profession that prides itself of toughness yet can’t take a little criticism.

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  24. Julie Robinson said on February 22, 2016 at 1:45 pm

    Speaking of not being able to poke fun, right before vacation I learned that my great-great-grandmother was African-Canadian, and my family tree has expanded exponentially. It’s been great fun tracking down the story and meeting new-to-me family members. It was apparently an open secret for some in our area, though Mom says she’s sure Dad never knew, and none of his siblings seemed to either. DNA testing is happening now. Oh, those family secrets.

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  25. Jeff Borden said on February 22, 2016 at 2:44 pm

    I’ve been trying to game out how this Republican presidential campaign proceeds, but every scenario I confront is bad for our nation. Marco Roboto, seen by those who don’t pay attention as more moderate, is a terrifyingly shallow man who sounds the most bellicose notes when it comes to foreign policy and who vows to “rebuild” our military. I guess spending more than the next 10 nations combined still isn’t enough.

    Edouardo Rafaelo Cruz is, perhaps, even worse. A fellow despised by everyone who has ever been around him and possessed of a dangerous messiah complex after decades of being told by his nutty father he alone can save America and god himself, he would be unable to govern from day one. He, too, traffics in throaty calls for war and “carpet bombing.”

    And there is Donald J. Trump, the combed over, spray tanned id who will literally say anything at any time and the truth be damned, such as his most recent lie about how Gen. John J. Pershing dealt with rebels in the Phillipines by shooting them with bullets dipped in a pig’s blood. It’s literally beyond imagining for me to see him talking with any world leader aside, perhaps, from his buddy, Vlad Putin. We’d be watching a bull in a china shop trying to learn how to govern on the fly. And, yeah, he’d have the nuclear codes, too.

    Assuming neither of these three louts can be elected –and I still believe any one of them could based on unforeseen events– what will the GOP do going forward? The party admitted after the defeat of Willard Romney that is was seen as unwelcoming to women, minorities, younger voters. And that was before this horrible and terrible primary, when they’ve all taken turns targeting the very voters the Republican survey said they needed to reach. How does the party remain viable when a huge percentage of its base is made up of nativists and haters and those terrified of the world around them? Especially when those fears and resentments have been fed to the base by the party for decades.

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  26. brian stouder said on February 22, 2016 at 3:23 pm

    Jeff, my only answer is – I don’t know.

    I’m finally on the homestretch of a history of Indiana (as it is our bicentennial, afterall) -and 1920’s Indiana was all about nativistism and anti-Catholicism and indeed, the ascendant ‘statement’/movement – their “tea party” of the day – was the Ku Klux Klan.

    In 2016, all I think of when KKK comes up is lynchings and so on; whereas the author (James H Madison of IU @ Bloomington) takes pains to differentiate between what the Klan is now seen as, compared to what it was then.

    Soon enough, the 1930’s and the depression wiped out the Republican party almost entirely, and the Indianapolis power brokers – the “establishment” – grew tired of the KKK and their scandals and so on, and the KKK rolled off of Main Street and back in the alleys and weeds.

    Somehow, none of that was very re-assuring, though(!)

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  27. brian stouder said on February 22, 2016 at 3:24 pm

    http://www.amazon.com/Hoosiers-A-New-History-Indiana/dp/0253013089

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  28. Jolene said on February 22, 2016 at 4:29 pm

    Jeff, your characterizations of the GOP candidates are on target. I can only add that I hope their weaknesses will become increasingly apparent and make them easier to beat.

    I do, actually, think Hillary would beat either Cruz or Trump. They’re both just too crazy. More important, based on the results in South Carolina, Cruz is not even attracting a majority of his conservative Christian base. Trump seems to have broader appeal, and his willingness to say anything makes him a scary opponent, but I have to think a majority of Americans will see the liabilities of putting a loud-mouthed narcissist with almost no knowledge of foreign policy in office.

    Rubio could be tougher to beat, mostly because of youth and charm. Many Republicans do not trust him because, in the past, he has been insufficiently harsh on illegal immigrants, so perhaps that will suppress enthusiasm for him.

    All that said, for reasons unclear to me, many people hate Hillary Clinton with the heat of a thousand suns. It’s likely that, by November, so much partisan venom will have been broadcast that we’ll all hate all of them.

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  29. Jolene said on February 22, 2016 at 4:54 pm

    A notice from my PBS station re a concert to be broadcast on Friday. Check your local listings.

    A WETA co-production presents a White House concert featuring interpretations of the popular music of iconic singer, songwriter, composer and musician Ray Charles, who won 17 Grammy Awards, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Medal of Arts, and the Kennedy Center Honors, among other accolades.

    The show will feature performances by Yolanda Adams, Andrea Day, Brittany Howard, Demi Lovato, Jussie Smollett, Usher and more. In tandem with this program, the Smithsonian is producing digital resources that will explore Charles’ life and legacy; and a National Museum of American History exhibition will also spotlight the performer.

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  30. St Bitch said on February 22, 2016 at 4:56 pm

    I can’t imagine the Republicans ever allowing Trump to be the party candidate…nor can I see Trump letting that stop him. He’ll go rogue – drunk with the roar of the rabble he can endlessly afford to rouse.

    Rubio was still on a steep learning curve for Iowa…but he seems to have found his mojo and is just beginning to hit his stride. As Jolene says, he has youth and charm. He’s playful with the press rather than wary like Cruz. I think he’s exhibiting enough charisma to inspire his base like Obama inspires me. He’s the one to watch.

    It’s shaping up to be a neck-and-neck nail-biter…

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  31. Jeff Borden said on February 22, 2016 at 5:04 pm

    If Marco Rubio does emerge from the scrum and wins election, buy stock in defense companies and send your young sons and daughters out of the country because he is hellbent on fighting a war in the Middle East. He’s even more aggressive in his foreign policy than Cruz, who likely would try to jumpstart Armageddon so we could get it on with the End Times. BTW, Rubio also opposes abortion in cases of rape and incest, a position so squalid, so naked in its cruelty that it alone should make reasonable people avoid him.

    If the GOP loses, it means it will have won only one presidential election since 1988 and 2004 wasn’t exactly a rout for Bush 43. Will the party double down on the god bothering, the targeting of immigrants and minorities, the fear mongering on Muslims? Is it possible a moderate GOP could emerge? It’s hard to see that happening. Maybe a split with the tea baggers and racists going in one direction and the business and corporate wing going in the other?

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  32. Deborah said on February 22, 2016 at 5:09 pm

    I think it’s interesting to look at the spouses of the remaining candidates. Trump of course has eye candy for his third wife and Rubio’s wife was a Miami Dolphins cheerleader when they met. Cruz’s wife is well educated and a professional in finance of some sort. Sander’s wife is or was a college president and of course Hillary’s spouse is a former president. I don’t know anything about Kasich’s wife except that she’s younger than he is by some years. I don’t know what any of this says about the candidates but it seems to me to have something to do with their character.

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  33. Sherri said on February 22, 2016 at 5:10 pm

    I’m not sure the Republicans can stop Trump from becoming the Republican nominee at this point, unless they can strong-arm everybody but Rubio into dropping out, and how likely is it that Republican party bosses are going to be able to convince Ted Cruz of anything? I continue to believe that there is a hard ceiling on Trump’s support, but if Cruz takes away enough of Rubio’s support, then Rubio might not pass that ceiling. It may also come to delegate math, and it’s far from clear what a contested convention would look like if no one has enough delegates.

    Rubio may have recovered from the Christie attack in Iowa, but Trump has yet to start insulting Rubio like he has other candidates. When he focuses on Rubio, will Rubio hold up under that?

    One thing I’m fairly confident of now: Ted Cruz will not be the Republican nominee.

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  34. Deborah said on February 22, 2016 at 6:29 pm

    Sherri, I hope you’re right about Cruz, I find him creepy as hell and he needs a come down. I read something when I was waiting for Little Bird to get done with her dentist appointment earlier today, that Cruz’s wife got a message from God that her husband should run for President after the family had been on their knees praying in their Pastor’s office for two hours. What a bunch of scammers.

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  35. Charlotte said on February 22, 2016 at 8:11 pm

    Ah insurance. I’m on an Obamacare plan (but I don’t get the subsidy). We have a local insurance co-op, but one of my questions was, if something really terrible/serious happens, where can I go and be covered? Salt Lake it turns out, which is fine, and I think perhaps one or two of the good Seattle hospitals. Now I’m just holding my breath to see whether my deductible/annual out of pocket is real. But I’m HORRIFIED by the retail prices of things the hospitals/surgical centers charge the insurance. Ridiculous.

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  36. alex said on February 22, 2016 at 8:24 pm

    Even if Rubio gets the nod, he doesn’t have the chops to debate Hillary. He’s a deer in the headlights when he’s up against people who don’t know what they’re talking about. I can’t imagine him holding his own with someone who does.

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  37. David C. said on February 22, 2016 at 8:58 pm

    God kept them on hold for two hours hoping they would just go away. When they wouldn’t he said “Jesus Christ, just tell them whatever it takes to get them off the line”.

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  38. Suzanne said on February 22, 2016 at 9:14 pm

    David C. For the win!!

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  39. Deborah said on February 22, 2016 at 10:35 pm

    I realized as I was reading something just now that in my comment earlier I neglected to mention Carson’s wife. I hardly think of him as still running. But his wife is a trained concert violinist with a good education and some credible achievements that I can’t remember right now. Funny how Carson as a candidate just slipped my mind.

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  40. Sherri said on February 23, 2016 at 12:18 am

    If more people had read Mark Twain, Donald Trump wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, because that kind of blustering egomania con artist is all through Huckleberry Finn, and you would recognize that this guy doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.

    David Denby, from this interview: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-denby-donald-trump_us_56c62dd9e4b0ec6725e1fd1b?ir=Books&section=us_books&utm_hp_ref=books

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