No surprise-Kenosha killing suspect is a Trump supporter

The person who is alleged to have killed two people and injured another during the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin following the killing of yet another unarmed black man by police, has been identified.

The law enforcement–obsessed 17-year-old who was charged with shooting and killing two people and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests for Jacob Blake appeared in the front row at a Donald Trump rally in January.

Kyle Howard Rittenhouse’s social media presence is filled with him posing with weapons, posting “Blue Lives Matter,” and supporting Trump for president. Footage from the Des Moines, Iowa, rally on Jan. 30 shows Rittenhouse feet away from the president, in the front row, to the left of the podium. He posted a TikTok video from the event.

Seven months later, Rittenhouse went with his rifle to the third night of Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha after police shot Blake, a Black man who is now paralyzed as a result, according to his family. Rittenhouse attended as an armed vigilante, supposedly assisting police and protecting property in an unofficial capacity. Instead, he allegedly prowled the protest with a gun. Videos captured him fraternizing with law enforcement and attempting to get their attention.
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The Republican platform: “Owning the libs and pissing off the media”

Tim Alberta has a long article describing what he found when he asked Republican operators who worked at the highest levels of the party what it now stood for. What he found was that they could not articulate any coherent message other than being loyal to Trump.

The reason he went on this quest was that despite spending more than a decade studying the Republican party, he found himself completely stumped by a question from a 17-year old high school student who asked in an exasperated voice, “I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand. What do Republicans believe? What does it mean to be a Republican?”
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Telling it like it is

Stuart Varney is, along with Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, Donald Trump’s most devoted hosts on Fox News and in a recent show he was visibly upset when Paul Romer, a former chief economist of the World Bank, called the people who speak about economics for the Trump administration, such as White House economics advisor Larry Kudlow, ‘liars for hire’ and that they should not be believed. When Varney remonstrated with him, Romer did not back down.

Trump risks overexposure

It used to be that American political party conventions involved some genuine uncertainty about who would become the party nominee and spirited debates about what the party platform should contain since that was supposed to (at lest in theory) set the party’s agenda for the next four years. But those days are gone. Nowadays the nominee is known well in advance and the party platform is also decided on and approved in advance. The last bit of suspense, the nominee’s pick for the vice-presidential slot, is now also announced in advance. Conventions have become infomercials consisting of fulsome praise for the nominees and criticisms of the rival party and candidates.
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Overcoming the fear of death the Epicurean way

Many people fear death and it has been argued that one major appeal of religion is that it enables people to think that they are immortal, that even if they physically die they will still live on in some spirit form.

Sam Dresser discusses how taking the approach of the Epicurean school of philosophers can reduce the fear of death without invoking an afterlife.
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Another shoe drops in the Falwell saga

In October of last year I wrote about the puzzling case involving the then-head of Liberty University Jerry Falwell, Jr, his wife, and their strange business dealings with some people, and said that there was clearly something going on behind the scenes. Today comes news that clarifies what was going on and it involves sex and blackmail.

Powerful evangelical leader and close Trump ally Jerry Falwell Jr has said that his wife’s ex-lover tried to blackmail them by contacting the media with “false claims” about their relationship.

Falwell’s statement to the Washington Examiner took place amid his indefinite suspension as head of the conservative evangelical Liberty University, which came several days after he shared a photo of himself with his pants unzipped while aboard a yacht.
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An occasion when this excuse may actually be true

When a person says they are leaving a prominent position in government or business to ‘spend more time with their family’, that is often an indication that they have been pressured to leave or that there is a scandal looming that they want to get ahead of. So when Kellyanne Conway suddenly announced yesterday that she was leaving her position as White House counselor at the end of this month and giving that exact reason, my first reaction was wondering what the other show was and when it would drop. This is because Conway has been close to Trump from during the 2016 campaign and has been one of his most loyal aides, ever willing to go on TV and defends his actions and lies, however outrageous. Through all the turnovers in the Trump administration, she has been a fixture.
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Viewing the evolution of language positively

Geoff Nunberg, a linguist who gave frequent commentaries on NPR’s Fresh Air radio program died recently at the age of 75. I enjoyed listening to his views because, although not a linguist myself, I enjoy exploring the nuances and quirks of the English language and Nunberg’s opinions were always interesting and informative. He was not a scold, trying to police people’s speech. Instead he explored how and why language evolves and what its use tells us about ourselves and the state of society.

Consider his take on the ‘singular they’, something that I too wrote about recently. Nunberg writes about his mystification to the opposition to its adoption.
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Even Trump’s sister despises him

Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece who has come out with a bombshell book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man that slams him, seems to have decided to burn all her bridges with her family. While Trump’s late brother who died recently defended him and criticized Mary for writing her book, Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a former federal judge, has been silent, at least in public. But she has not been as reticent in private and Mary has released secret recordings in which Maryanne slams her brother.
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