The opening speech in Florida

I am not going to repeat any of the text of what Trump said in the opening speech of his campaign.  Details of that are already widely available.  But I have a few brief comments.

I have studied closely the Fascist/Nazi era in prewar Europe so comparisons with that come easily to mind.  And there is no doubt that Trump's speaking style closely resembles that of Mussolini -- the staccato words, the air of indignation, the facial expressions  and the bodily movements.  And both men were preaching a message of insurgent patriotism -- of taking the country back from those who did not have its interests at heart.

But Mussolini was a very successful orator and leader.  So it is no surprise that another successful insurgent patriot would reinvent his approach.

The similarity to Hitler is much less marked.  Unlike Trump, Hitler was very fluent and did not continue on the same constant emotional level that Trump does.  Hitler's speeches were a crescendo, starting out very calmly and gradually building up to a huge pitch of emotionalism and excitement.  The only similarity I can see between Hitler and Trump is that both spoke extempore, without using prompts.   Obama, by contrast read almost every word of his speeches off a teleprompter. His persona as a speaker and leader was a complete fake.  He was basically a dummy.

So any Leftist reading these comments will be disappointed.  They will love the Trump/Mussolini comparison and say that Trump is therefore a Fascist but will hate the Hitler comparison which says that Trump is not at all like Hitler.  But that is the way that the cookie crumbles.  All it shows is that anybody who judges people by their speaking style is a fool.  It's policies that count, not the window dressing

And the policies of the two men are about as opposite as you can get. Musso summarized his policies as: "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" (Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State).  Trump, by contrast, is doing his best to get the government out of people's lives  -- JR.

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"More than a President":  CNN gets it right for once

"The Fake News doesn't report it, but Republican enthusiasm is at an all time high," tweeted Trump on Tuesday morning. "Look what is going on in Orlando, Florida, right now! People have never seen anything like it (unless you play a guitar). Going to be wild - See you later!" It was his third tweet in 24 hours touting the crowds gathering to witness the campaign kickoff. "Big Rally tomorrow night in Orlando, Florida, looks to be setting records," Trump tweeted on Monday. "We are building large movie screens outside to take care of everybody. Over 100,000 requests."

It's easy to roll your eyes at this now-familiar Trump self-puffery. Biggest crowds in history! More than 100,000 requests for an arena that only seats 20,000! Enthusiasm beyond belief! The fake news won't report on it!

But here's the thing: The spectacle happening in Orlando in advance of tonight's big speech is yet more clear evidence that Trump is more than a politician or even a President -- he is a pop-culture phenomenon the likes of which none of the 23 Democratic candidates running can match.

Trump is viewed -- by his most loyal supporters and even by those who may not support him but don't loathe him -- as a sort of rock star. (The President's reference to his Orlando crowd as never before seen outside of rock concerts was almost assuredly accidental -- but telling nonetheless.) The ardor and commitment of those who stand beside Trump is the envy of any politician looking to keep his base behind him. And the reverence they express for Trump -- buying his MAGA hats, making homemade T-shirts with his face plastered on them, the guy with the "wall" suit -- is the sort of stuff that get-out-the-vote experts salivate over.

That anecdotal energy is reflected in polling, too. Trump's job approval rating among Republicans in the latest Gallup monthly tracking poll was 89% -- and it hasn't been lower than 80% since December 2017. While Trump's overall job approval number was just 43% in the latest CNN poll this month, when you included only those registered voters who described themselves as "very enthusiastic" about the coming election, 48% approved of the job the incumbent was doing while 50% disapproved -- a far closer split.

It's important to remember that prior to being President -- or even running for president -- Trump had woven himself into the cultural fabric. Whether through cameos in movies ("Little Rascals," "Home Alone 2"), his reality TV shows or a steady stream of personal life rumors in gossip rags, Trump was someone known across the country -- and really, across the world. And for a not-small subset of people Trump represented aspirational wealth -- a man who had succeeded so much that he could do and say whatever he wanted, all while living in the lap of luxury.

At the start of his presidential bid, many of the people who turned out were there to see a celebrity, not a politician. They figured that Trump probably had no chance but still wanted to see if he would sign their dog-eared copy of the "The Art of the Deal." Trump won many of them over with his performative nature and his passel of promises about how he could fix everything.

While many of those promises haven't yet come true -- the wall along the southern border is not completed, for example -- lots of Americans who still support Trump don't really care because they voted for a celebrity and that's exactly what they got. They don't hold him to the same standards they hold other politicians because they don't see him as a politician; they see him as a rock star.

SOURCE 

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Fake News Fail: Fans of Supposedly Unpopular Trump Line Up 40 Hours Early To Watch Him Speak

To hear the predominately liberal establishment media tell it, President Donald Trump is a deeply unpopular politician who assuredly will lose his 2020 re-election bid in embarrassing fashion to whichever Democrat he faces.

It would appear, however, that the people of central Florida and the surrounding area didn’t receive that message, as reports indicate there has been a phenomenal display of support for the president in that region that the mainstream media are reluctant to share with the rest of the country.

That show of support comes by way of the massive number of Trump supporters who have sought to obtain tickets to a Tuesday night rally in Orlando that will mark the official launch of the president’s re-election campaign.

Supporters started lining up for the rally early Monday morning, roughly 42 hours prior to the start of that event.

On Monday, Trump tweeted, “Big Rally tomorrow night in Orlando, Florida, looks to be setting records. We are building large movie screens outside to take care of everybody. Over 100,000 requests. Our Country is doing great, far beyond what the haters & losers thought possible — and it will only get better!”

Orlando’s WKMG-TV reported that the first handful of Trump supporters to arrive outside the Amway Center for the rally at 8 p.m. Tuesday showed up around 2:30 a.m. Monday.

The very first man in line, Gary Beck of Panama City, told the station, “There’s going to be a bunch of people, and it’s going to be pretty intense.”

“The electricity is going to be high,” he said. “It’s time for America to get back on its feet and be made better than it’s ever been before.”

Despite having a long wait in line until the event begins, those who showed up early will no doubt consider themselves lucky by Tuesday night, given that while their entry to the event is all but assured. The same cannot be said of the tens of thousands of other Trump supporters who have requested tickets to the rally, upward of five times as many as the 20,000-seat venue is permitted to hold.

Indeed, Florida Today reported Thursday that there had been such a massive response to the announcement of the campaign kickoff rally that organizers were forced to make the event a “first-come, first-served” affair.

“Orlando rally entry is on a first-come, first-serve basis, so a ticket doesn’t necessarily guarantee entry,” Kayleigh McEnany, national press secretary for the Trump 2020 campaign, said in a statement to the news outlet. “There will be screens outside the venue to watch the rally once capacity is reached.”

The huge demand for the Orlando rally tickets is the opposite of what the establishment media would have everyone believe about Trump’s popularity.

Instead, the liberal media want Americans to think the Democratic candidates — who are drawing dozens, sometimes hundreds of supporters to their events — have the bulk of the nation behind them while Trump stands virtually alone.

The many people in central Florida who are willing to stand in line for a chance to see and support their president tell a vastly different story.

SOURCE 

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Why Doesn’t the Left Want To Know How Many US Citizens Live in America?

Questions as part of the coming census will include age, sex, ethnic origin, race, household relationship and if a housing unit is owned or rented. Reinstatement of the citizenship question will hang on the failure or success by Democrats to obstruct a Supreme Court vote.

President Donald Trump believes that “When a census goes out you have the right to ask whether or not someone is a citizen of the United States.” Democrats against the reinstatement of a citizenship question have bills in the House and in the Senate that would prohibit it.

Census results provide the basis for reapportioning congressional seats, congressional redistricting, electoral college votes, and the annual distribution of billions of dollars to states, counties and communities. The Constitution mandates a census every ten years.

A citizenship question was in the census until 1950 when two census forms were initiated; a short and a long form. From 1970 to 2000 a question regarding citizenship remained in the long form.

In 2010, President Barack Obama removed it. Trump wants it reinstated.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the reinstatement by the end of June, in time to have a resolution for the 2020 census. California and other states sued to block reinstatement. States with large immigrant populations fret that congressional seats and federal funding will be impacted.

Leftist groups assaulting the citizenship question include The Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, Muslim Advocates, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, National Association of Latino officials, National Coalition of Black Civic Participation, several unions, and 124 more organizations. Declarations propose that a citizenship question is racially discriminatory.

Fearing that the Supreme Court would vote for reinstatement, outrageous political delay tactics from the House Oversight and Reform Committee are led by Congressman Elijah Cummings. He demands Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross provide additional testimony and secured documents. He issued contempt citations on each of them. Democrats hope to run out the clock on the Supreme Court’s ability to vote in a timely manner.

Trump invoked Executive Privilege to block Cummings heinous “slow the process” tactics. If he succeeds, the Supreme Court decision will be postponed, and the time frame will have passed.

President Lyndon Johnson signed The Voting Rights Act into law in 1965, with a goal to overcome legal barriers that prevented African-Americans from exercising their right to vote. There have been amendments; but the major premise remains: to ensure there are no legal barriers preventing American citizens from voting.

Only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote. To enforce the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department needs to know how many eligible citizens exist and where they live.

States with large immigrant populations claim that asking about citizenship will frighten people to avoid filling out census forms. The Census Bureau is legally bound to confidentiality, and cannot share respondents answers with anyone — not the IRS, the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security or any government agency.

Congressional seats are not assigned by the number of citizens, but by the number of residents. Cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Chicago, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis and others have high numbers of congressional seats due to large citizen and non-citizen populations. Non-citizen residents are counted in the census which could result in more congressional seats.

If there are fewer voters in a district than citizens eligible to vote, it could be a case for voter suppression under the Voter Rights Act. If there are more registered voters in a district than there are U.S. citizens, that could cause concerns of voter fraud.

In either case, the Justice Department must have citizen census numbers in order to make an informed determination.

Political acrimony is being used to prevent the 2020 census from determining how many residents of this country are U.S. citizens. In this, the left is on a fool’s errand.

SOURCE 

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Manafort To Avoid Time at Rikers Following Letter from Top DOJ Official

Paul Manafort was reportedly headed for Rikers Island to await trial on the state level in New York but will be held in a federal facility following a letter from a Department of Justice higher-up, reported The New York Times on Monday.

Manafort, a former lobbyist, was convicted on charges of tax illegalities brought by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his Russian interference investigation.

Federal prison officials said Monday that the former Trump campaign chairman will not be held at the notorious Rikers Island after Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen took an interest in where Manafort was held, The Times reported.

New York prosecutors did not object to Manafort’s attorneys’ proposal that he remain in federal custody and be made available to the state when necessary for health and safety reasons, a senior DOJ official told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Manafort is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan ahead of his arraignment next week, federal prison officials told Manhattan prosecutors Monday, according to a source cited by The Times.

A senior DOJ official confirmed to TheDCNF that Manafort had been transferred from Pennsylvania, where he is currently serving his sentence, to New York.

Manafort could stay at the Manhattan facility or go back to the Loretto, Pennsylvania, prison where he is serving seven-and-a-half-years, people with knowledge of the matter told The Times. Both are federal facilities.

Manhattan’s district attorney obtained an indictment of Manafort on 16 state felonies in mid-March.

The fraud charges brought by District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. mean Manafort could still have to serve prison time if convicted because President Donald Trump’s commutation and pardon powers extend only to federal sentences.

Manafort is serving a federal sentence as a result of two separate trials.

He pleaded guilty to and was convicted of charges related to political consulting work he did in Ukraine prior to joining the Trump campaign in 2016.

Manafort’s lawyer Todd Blanche, however, continues to object to the charges brought by Vance.

SOURCE 

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Only In Seattle: White Woman To Teach An ‘Undoing Whiteness’ Yoga Class

Just another "alternative" nut

If you’ve ever felt guilt as a white person doing yoga — you know, appropriating another culture like that — there’s a solution: you can take a yoga class focused on “undoing whiteness,” and instead of just releasing all of the tension in your muscles, you release all of the white supremacy embedded in your body.

The Seattle Times reports:

This spring, [Laura] Humpf publicized an “Undoing Whiteness” yoga class at Rainier Beach Yoga, geared toward white people wishing to “unpack the harmful ways white supremacy is embedded” in their “body, mind and heart.” Along with providing a contemplative space, the class would dissect the “pathology of whiteness” — an obliviousness to the batch of privileges society grants white skin — and how it operates in daily life.

Humpf, 39, sees her class as going beyond yoga’s elegant poses. It seeks, she says, to arrive at yoga’s literal meaning: union. White supremacy thwarts achieving that union within the individual and with others, says Humpf.

Along with posing the toxic whiteness out of themselves, participants hear excerpts from the book “Witnessing Whiteness,” meant “to help white people deal with discomfort around race-based conversations.”

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated), A Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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