“After years of peddling a false conspiracy theory that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, Donald Trump — just 53 days before Election Day — now says he believes the president was born in the U.S.
“President Obama was born in the United States. Period,” Trump said at a campaign event in a ballroom in his new hotel in Washington. “Now, we want to get back to … (bla bla bla).”
That’s from NPR.
This is clearly going to hurt Donald Trump with his base. The accusation to begin with wad deplorable, after all.
That was today, a few minutes ago.
But yesterday …
Start about midway:
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Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
If he had never used that as a campaign issue in 2012 he would never have had to say this. Now, he’s pissed that it’s an issue
Why this race is close is beyond me. He’s such a pissant in purple robes.
“Why this race is close is beyond me”
Because Hillary IS that bad!
Why is the race close?
There are. More stupid, bigoted racist people to ask trump than we suspected.
“to back Trump”, not “ask Trump’.
This is why the race is so close: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2016/09/10/how-the-press-created-frankentrump-and-ruined-civilization/
“Why is the race so close?”
It’s the woman thing. As with racism and President Obama, from the beginning, people are either in denial or simply unwilling to admit their discomfort with what is a monumental change for the USA.
If Joe Biden were running, or even a less experienced male like Kaine, both of whom are politically similar to HRC, there would be none of the nonsensical “negatives” that are assigned to Hillary. She’s just an uppity female, like Obama was an uppity you-know-what.
By the way– the race is not really all that close– mostly media trying to hype it for obvious reasons. What y’all need to worry about is the Senate; there is obviously a lot of Koch money going into really despicable ads against Dems where I am and I assume the same elsewhere.
Sadly, yes, that is key, but why is THAT key? There really is nothing monumental about having a woman leader. Happens all the time.
The idea of the country falling apart if Hillary is elected requires maintenance. See link above.
Jeez, Greg, you are the freakin’ expert on this topic– let’s not fall into the “ought-is” fallacy. We are genetically a bit more like bonobos, I think, but pan troglodytes is how we pan out.
For those of us equally comfortable with being bossed around by women or men, it all seems crazy. But that relates back to life experience and psychology, and clearly there are a whole lot of guys out there with small hands and massive insecurities. Not to mention a whole lot of women, apparently, for whom the existing hierarchical structure is more comfortable. Nurture, nature, what???
You explain it.
There are a lot of women national leaders. In those countries, there was not a systematic effort to make sure that there not be a woman leader that was given press. In this county, there was. That’s all I’m saying.
OMG – brilliant strategy. He know we all know he is a compulsive liar so now he says Obama was born in the USA so as to make us think he wasn’t. /s
I remember Trump saying that if he could be convinced President Obama really was born in the United States he (Trump) would give $5 million to charity.
Now that Trump has said there is no question about it, anyone want to put money on whether he’ll pay up?
Dean, I kinda hate to break this to you, but… Well, Donald Trump, um, … Well, .. Trump lied.
This race is close for the reasons that Greg points out in his linked article but also, because Hillary is running a very tepid campaign. This reminds me a lot of Bush/Gore . There is no world in which rational people vote for GW Bush over Al Gore. Gore was smarter, more experienced, better spoken. Bush was a failed business man who was the part-time governor of Texas. But he won because, it seems, Gore assumed that intelligent people would vote with their intelligence. Bush controlled the news cycle and it seems as though Gore and his surrogates were afraid to challenge the press.
Hillary needs a LOT more “basket of deplorables” type coverage to win . Sitting back and counting on position papers and people’s natural intelligence just isn’t going to cut if. If the Democrats don’t fight back, this one could EASILY go to Trump.
My 110 friends on facebook know where I stand, but I doubt that’s really making enough of a difference.
Greg #9
Absolutely agree– Bill broke the mold in the first place, and Hillary was seen as a real threat to do the same. Hence the constant attacks that had nothing to do with policy.
Walt Garage #13,
But everyone wanted to have a beer with GWB, even though he didn’t drink (anymore). He was viewed as innocuous. I think the potential crossover vote is a reason not to be so pessimistic as you seem– many Republicans rejected McCain because they thought he (and Palin) might be dangerous, and I suspect many will do the same in this case with respect to Trump.
They’re still going to make money even if HRC is elected, and they certainly don’t want a trade war or a real war. They will do their best to keep the Senate, and that will be sufficient for their purposes.
The opposition to Hillary has nothing to do with her being a woman, just like the extreme dislike of Obama has nothing to do with his race. Both are horrible people. Nothing good about either. And to think that gore was smarter than Bush is completely asinine. There’s something clinically wrong with anybody that likes either of them.
On the tepidness of the campaign: Everyone who is saying the Clinton campaign is tepid, please report what state you are in.
Locally, here in MN, both campaigns are essentially absent. I’ve not seen a single lawn sign, or a single ad.
I think Trump did worse here than in any state in the primaries. He will be creamed here. Not because there aren’t conservative yahoos in MN. We did elect Pawlenty, Bachmann, Coleman, etc. multiple times. But Trump is from New York, looks like a New Yorker, talks like a New Yorker. We don’t cotton to New Yorkers so much around here.
The point being, campaigning is local. I imagine if you live in Ohio, Pen, Fla, etc. you’ve got campaigning all over you like slime on snail.
To the author of comment #15:
I admire the self-descriptive nature of the handle you’ve chosen.
…3…2…1…
(Counting down for the introduction of a certain Latin phrase…)
You folks have overlooked the obvious. Voter turnout in the USA is absurdly low because nothing changes regardless of which party has the “White House” in its win column.
In this election one of the candidates is opposed by both major parties and that may be enough to bring the stay-at-home voters to the polls on November 8.
My major interest is K-12 education and Donald Trump is promising to curb the US Department of Education while returning control of our schools to the local community. I would vote for Lucifer himself if he made such a promise.
Gal, didja ever notice that Donny Boy says lots of things to get credulous people to vote for him that are pure lies?
Do you get that “bait & switch” is one of Lucifer’s tricks for the gullible?
How was it you said you could be manipulated so easily?
“My major interest is K-12 education and Donald Trump is promising to curb the US Department of Education …”
If you are too stupid to see that such a thing would destroy public education, you’ve already failed in your personal education.
I’m a Brit, so this needs parsing for me. Would there be a faith school or two in the mix, and perhaps a certain amount of teaching the controversy?
I suspect he’s more of the ilk who evangelize the bankrupting and dismantling of the federal government and its agencies as an irritating source of taxes and laws that are both unwanted by the Deplorables.
“Would there be a faith school or two in the mix, and perhaps a certain amount of teaching the controversy”
Yes to both. Some of this is already happening in Louisiana, where state money is going to schools that don’t just teach the controversy but use ID/creationist materials. Opposition to Common Core standards is a large part of this as well, with the loudest opposition aimed at standards in mathematics, generated primarily (or so it seems) by adults who have serious problems with their own abilities in math.
Brainstorms; dean
Thank you both. Thought so. Funny how predictable it all is.
“faith school” => “superstition school”
Fixed.
There are a lot of women national leaders. In those countries, there was not a systematic effort to make sure that there not be a woman leader that was given press. In this county, there was.
American exceptionalism at work!
@Dean (#20),
Putting government schools under the control of locally elected boards worked rather well in New Zealand (Tomorrows Schools, 1989).
I have been trying to put the NZ ideas into practice in the USA and have started eight schools since 1996. These schools respond directly to the community they serve so each is different.
The Woods CS serves YUPPY families who want their kids to attend the top colleges. Thus this school usually ranks in the top 50 among government high schools in the USA:
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/woods.html
In contrast the Carter CS caters to “Special Ed” children living in Walltown, a disadvantaged community community in Durham, North Carolina:
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/carter.html
We must be doing something right as some of our schools now have waiting lists that exceed the total student enrollment.
http://morcombe.net/Senate/Education.htm
@27: are you the climate change denying “gallopingcamel” who has posted in many spots around the internet?
If so, why should we trust someone as scientifically (what? ignorant, dishonest) as you.
If not – someone very bad has hijacked your name.
Charter schools. I hate those guys.
http://atomicinsights.com/fighting-climate-change-skeptics-in-the-pro-nuclear-community/#comment-46244
Dean (#28),
“why should we trust someone as scientifically (what? ignorant, dishonest) as you. ”
You should trust me because the facts are on my side:
[NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is against the policy of this blog to post to science deiner sites. ESPECIAllY THAT ONE -gtl]
Dean (#28),
Could somebody who you call “Scientifically Ignorant” have built the world’s brightest gamma ray source?
http://www.tunl.duke.edu/web.tunl.2011a.higs.php
Click on the movie link and you might learn something about Inverse Compton Scattering that powers GRBs (Gamma Ray Bursters)……..the brightest events in our universe.
If you understand Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity you might enjoy this:
https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/bussard-revisited/
Greg Laden (#29),
Why do you hate charter schools?
I hate charter schools for all the same reasons everybody else does. Since you happen to be experienced at running this con, you know what those reasons are.
You claim that everybody hates charter schools. If that was true my schools would not have huge waiting lists.
Do you have children? If so please tell me how you selected the schools they attend.
I did not claim that everyone hates charter schools. I claim that the reasons I hate them are the same as everyone else’s reasons. You know what those reasons are. We will not be doing promos for charter schools on this blog.
Apparently “XXXXXXXXXX” is “Persona Non Grata” here.
Try this link in response to Dean (#28):
[Once again, no links to science denier sites. That was your last warning -gtl]
“You should trust me because the facts are on my side”
Well no, they are not, but the fact that you are willing to repeat that lie (and, in other locations, argue that climate change is false because predictions by Malthusians are wrong) is why it is justified to call you a science denier.
Greg (#37),
It is time for me to depart. I hope you will enjoy my parting shot which was written by Flanders & Swann many years ago:
The fragrant honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun,
And many other creepers do the same.
But some climb anti-clockwise, the bindweed does, for one,
Or Convolvulus, to give her proper name.
Rooted on either side a door, one of each species grew,
And raced towards the window-ledge above.
Each corkscrewed to the lintel in the only way it knew,
Where they stopped, touched tendrils, smiled, and fell in love.
Said the right-handed honeysuckle to the left-handed bindweed,
“Oh, let us get married, if our parents don’t mind, we’d
Be loving and inseparable, inextricably entwined, we’d
Live happily ever after” said the honeysuckle to the bindweed.
To the honeysuckle’s parents it came as a shock.
“The bindweeds,” they cried, “are inferior stock!
They’re uncultivated, of breeding bereft,
We twine to the right and they twine to the left.”
Said the anti-clockwise bindweed to the clockwise honeysuckle,
“We’d better start saving, many a mickle macks a muckle,
Then run away for a honeymoon and hope that our luck’ll
Take a turn for the better” said the bindweed to the honeysuckle.
A bee who was passing remarked to them then,
“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,
Consider your offshoots, if offshoots there be,
They’ll never receive any blessing from me”.
“Poor little sucker, how will it learn,
When it is climbing, which way to turn?
Right, left, what a disgrace,
Or it may go straight up and fall flat on its face!”
Said the right-hand-thread honeysuckle to the left-hand-thread bindweed,
“It seems they’re against us, all fate has combined.
Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Colombine,
Thou art lost and gone forever, we shall never intertwine”.
Together, they found them, the very next day,
They had pulled up their roots and just shrivelled away.
Deprived of that freedom for which we must fight,
To veer to the left or to veer to the right!
“Both are horrible people. Nothing good about either.”
But that’s a mere claim. If I were to claim, for example, that the successful capture of Saddam was a good thing, then your claim is wrong against obama. And having NOTHING GOOD does NOT make you a horrible person.
Given you’ve shown nothing to indicate they are horrible people, all we really have is you are a horrible person. And the claim’s falsity also brings into doubt your claim it’s nothing to do with their sex or race.
“And to think that gore was smarter than Bush is completely asinine. ”
Yeah, another claim that’s complete bullshit and puts into doubt any other unsubstantiated claim you’ve made. Gore is a successful businessman. Shrub killed several businesses he ran. And Shrub killed more people in his time as governor of Texas than any other governor in their history.
Or is killing people (and laughing at their cries as they are lead to the noose) a good thing in your book? Because if so, your book is “Opposite”.
John Oliver exposes charter schools. Sadly, we are having an advertisement war in Boston, and the saccharine mildly sexy voiced woman who claims they are “public schools” is probably going to win over some people. It’s not that they are bad, it is that they are private schools and public funds are being diverted from those who need public schools the most: those without choice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_htSPGAY7I
(John Oliver addresses another part, which is the looting and exploiting of the public purse by those who appear to have no morals about stealing and misrepresenting. That’s no quite the argument I made in my first paragraph here.)
Fact is, rich people and struggling people who can bankrupt themselves for their children use school choice with different means but for the same reason: because they want their kids to do well.
It’s not a level playing field, and kids deserve better.
“GallopingCamel” is an interesting case. I read through the entire thread on Atomic Insights (though I skimmed a lot after I had the participants’ POVs pegged.) I found that “GC” is a physicist who apparently is responsible for what he called the brightest gamma-ray source going.
Despite that, he’s obdurately wrong about climate change. I have no idea about the quality of the charter schools he says he started. But it’s clear that running education as a for-profit business (or “bisnose”) is not the way to provide a well-educated populace.
“Despite that, he’s obdurately wrong about climate change”
There are very good physicians who don’t believe evolution can be true (Egnor, Carson, as two). There are others who don’t believe HIV causes AIDS.
There area few high-level people in every field who deny well-established areas of other topics. They all seem to be tremendously sure that their views are correct – as GC illustrated.
Um, ‘physicist’ may be a stretch for GC. Without digging too deeply, I think maybe we’re looking at undergraduate level courses in free-market fundamentalism plus computer programming and some experience in administrative type positions — including in an academic and/or medical setting.
Hmm. Or maybe not. Oh well…
@Christopher Winter, September 21, 2016,
Thanks for taking the time to read some of my comments at “Atomic Insights”. I served on the Duke university “Radiation Safety Committee” for many years and can assure you that nuclear fission is the safest way to generate electricity.
I helped to create FREE that set up schools based on the ideas of William Willimon (Dean of the Duke University Chapel). While I am an Agnostic I have profound respect for Willimon’s ideas:
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/free.html
FREE was a NEMO (Not-for-profit Education Management Organization). We charged 3% for our services compared to the 15% or more charged by FEMOs (For Profit Education Management Organizations).
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/carter.html
FREE was able to survive on a 3% “cut” because it had no salaried staff. The organization was managed entirely by volunteers……none of us even claimed travel expenses.
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/carter.html
We were a bunch of amateurs but it took us only four years for the Woods Charter School to be ranked #1 out of 350 high schools in North Carolina.
The Woods CS ranks in the top ten every year in North Carolina and is often ranked in the top 50 schools in the USA. In 2016 the Woods CS only ranked #145 in the nation and #5 in North Carolina::
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/national-rankings
Obstreperous Applesauce (#44),
The Duke University Free Electron Laser Laboratory had the highest “Brains to Weight Ratio” of any organization I ever encountered so I don’t find your suggestion that I am a “Dim Bulb” offensive.
My colleagues included John Madey who invented the Free Electron Laser and Vladimir Litvinenko who invented the High Intensity Gamma Source. Then there was Dave Straub, Stephen Benson, Patrick O’Shea and Nicola Scafetta.
While I retired fourteen years ago I still teach on a part time basis:
http://www.bdidatalynk.com/PeterMorcombe.html
dean (#43)
“Despite that, he’s obdurately wrong about climate change”
I have at least a dozen guest posts that refute the above statement but they will be censored if I list them here.
If you doubt me please use my public email (info@gallopingcamel.info) to communicate “off-line”. I communicate with professional scientists including Jay Severinghaus, Thomas Stocker, Ned Nikolov, Tom Peterson, Richard Alley, Albert Klein Tank, Scott Denning, John Staddon, David Catling, Tyler Robinson, Nicola Scafetta, Robert G. Brown and many, many more.
@Greg Laden,
Thanks for your hospitality. I really admire your energy. Now I will leave you in peace for a while.