*Of course* the Trump acceptance speech took place on White House property

This may be obvious, but where else could Trump have gathered hundreds of people who weren't wearing face-masks and who weren't socially distanced without running afoul of local or state governmental regulations?

I'll let someone *else* rant about Trump, for a change

From DovBear commenter Look A Little Deeper:


"Sure, Trump talks the talk. But does he walk the walk?
Look at his criticisms of HRC during the debate: He said that she has been in politics for 30 years (though she only held elected office for 8 years) and asked how come, in those 30 years, she didn't do the things that she promises to do as President.
Leaving aside the fact that a single senator cannot set tax policy, enact a healthcare plan, deal with college tuition, etc. all on their own; that the First Lady can do even less; and that the Secretary of State has nothing to do with those things, there's another very obvious fact that stares everyone in the face and they all miss it.
That fact is that that very same question can be turned right back around on Trump himself.
He's been in business for over 40 years. He claims to be a multi-billionaire.
Sure, he can talk about his record of building buildings, casinos, and resorts (or leasing his name to other people's projects) and hiring thousands of employees over the decades..
But . . .
If saving manufacturing jobs is so important to him, why in his 40 years of business did he never open any factories himself? Why did he never purchase a formerly successful but now struggling plant and save it and the jobs of the workers? Why, when he put his name on suits, ties, etc. did he not have them made in the United States? If no US factories were adequate to the task (seems unlikely) why didn't he set up a plant to make them?
Trump has had just as much time as Hillary to do the things he is promising. And, if he is to be taken at his word concerning his finances, he has also, for quite a number of years, had the money to do it.
This isn't to say that Trump needed to single-handedly save all of US manufacturing. But he could have at least opened a plant somewhere. He could have at least saved a factory or two. He could have done something to show that he cared about the loss of manufacturing jobs and that he tried to do something about it.
If manufacturing was really so important to him, if it truly was something he was so passionate about, why did he concentrate all of his time and money on real estate, hotels, resorts, beauty pageants, and casinos?
As someone who has been involved in Washington for so many years, it's understandable that some people might be skeptical of Clinton. I get that. Washington is a machine, and Hillary has been a part of it.
However, if one simply peels back the layer and goes beyond Trump's talk (and it doesn't go very deep, either) one will find ample reason to be even more skeptical of him and his promises."


And for Pete's sake, even I, an underpaid employee of a not-for-profit organization, give more to charity than Trump does!

Teflon Don

Donald Trump broke the law by seeking investments in Cuba.


Donald Trump may have found a perfectly legal way to take credit on his personal income taxes for losing money that he didn't really lose, and, as a result, "the real estate mogul claimed about $916 million in losses "that would have been large enough to wipe out more than $50 million a year in taxable income over 18 years," the [New York] Times reported."


Not to mention that I think it would be reasonable to assume that the reason why the Trump Foundation was never certified by New York State to solicit money from the public is that "Charities as large as Trump’s must also submit to a rigorous annual audit that asks — among other things — whether the charity spent any money for the personal benefit of its officers", and Trump didn't want to be audited.


Trump even stood up at last night's debate and threatened to throw Clinton into jail, if he's elected, because she used a private e-mail server while serving as secretary of state, blithely ignoring the fact that he himself had used his illegal foundation to make an illegal donation to a political campaign.


Scandal after scandal after scandal, and Trump's supporters don't care.  :(  They talk about "lying Hillary" and "cheating Hillary," but their own candidate is Teflon-coated--no matter what he does wrong or how many times he breaks the law,  it doesn't make any difference to them.

The devolution of American culture

The ending of the movie "Grease" puzzled me.  What was so great about the sweet, modestly-dressed young woman morphing into a skin-tight-pants-wearing sexpot in order to win the heart of a drag-racing "greaser?"  I thought it was generally considered preferable to aspire to rise to a higher social level, not to stoop to a lower one.


Nor was I particularly happy about a recent performance of Beyoncé and her dance troupe at the VMA Awards show.  I clicked on a video of the performance, only to see the singer and her dancers wiggling their literally-80%-naked fannies in the viewers' faces.  I couldn't click it off quickly enough.  This is the way that people behave in public?!


Yes, I know--I've been there and blogged that.

But lest you think that this is just an older woman's rant about missing the good olde days, I have a question for you--do you see any connection between "bad" have become a sometime synonym for "good" and the recent "permission-granted-to-speak-freely" attitude that's made it perfectly acceptable for a person not only to remove his Ku Klux Klan hood and openly admit to being a white supremacist, but to run for public office as one?


In my opinion, the nomination of Donald Trump as the Presidential candidate of a major political party could not have happened without a deterioration of the standards of appropriate behavior.

How did everyone fail to see Trump's campaign coming?

How to report on a political campaign, and why such reporting hasn't happened, explained by Paul Berman in Tablet Magazine:

"You attend political rallies, where you can talk to people in groups. You hang out in neighborhoods where people enjoy talking politics. You allow your chats to wander aimlessly. You strike up friendships. You learn to distinguish eccentric people from typical people. And you come away with a pretty good idea of what ordinary people are thinking and doing. I am certain that any reasonably clever reporter who had spent enough time hanging out with Trump’s supporters would have learned that enormous numbers of those people were doing something more than wearing hats. In America, people boast about their dollar contributions.

I conclude that no one, or hardly anyone, has been reporting on Trump’s campaign in that fashion. Now, why not? Every journalist knows the answer. Reporters have not been reporting because, in the United States, the newspaper industry has largely collapsed. A huge number of newspapers no longer exist. Even at the biggest and most prestigious of the surviving papers, the staffs have changed such that in place of the seasoned old hands, the reporting is being done by young people who once would have been considered “stringers.” [*] And even the stringers are overworked—pressed to turn in stories on a basis of insufficient reporting."

[*"Stringers"]

I recommend that you read the entire article.

Two Trump theories

My own theory is that Donald Trump doesn't want to be president, he wants to be king--from what I've seen, Trump appears to be more interested in putting on a good show than in governing.  As reported by the Daily Kos, a New York Times article and a Huffington Post interview seem to support that idea.

A co-worker has a different theory, which is that Trump's candidacy actually began as a publicity stunt to put him in the headlines and drum up more business.  At this point, that wouldn't surprise me.

Speaking of a monarch putting on a good show, here's a very-belated something for your amusement
I got a good chuckle out of this photo of Theresa May accepting her appointment as British Prime Minister from Queen Elizabeth.  I ask you, what woman other than the Queen of Great Britain would carry a handbag in her own home?

Another war?

I've been saying this to my husband and son for weeks now, but Hillary Clinton said it better last night:

He is not just unprepared. He is temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability, and immense responsibility. This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes, because it’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.

I'm of the opinion that, if Trump becomes king, er, president, he'll drag the U.S. into another war.

Because his entire strategy--in the campaign, in business, and in his personal life--seems to be based on proving that he's a bigger man than the other guy.

Which leads me to think that the country most likely to be Trump's war target would be Russia.

After all, Trump and Putin are two egocentrics both of whom want to be seen as Mr. Machismo, and what better way could there be for Trump to prove that he's more macho than Putin than by beating the stuffing out of him (actually, his country).  Never mind the military personnel and the civilians doomed to die in this effort.  They'd be just collateral damage.

:(

My husband disagrees--he thinks Trump will get ticked off by ISIS, and the U.S. will end up in full-fledged war with them.

Or there's always North Korea . . .


See also . . . never mind.  I just created a Donald Trump label--just click on it, and you'll be able to see all my rants on the subject at once.  That said, my personal favorite is still It's a Country, Stupid.

Is lèse majesté coming to the USA?

Let's start with the definition, courtesy of Merriam-Webster: 

Definition of lèse–majesté

1. 1a :  a crime (as treason) committed against a sovereign powerb :  an offense violating the dignity of a ruler as the representative of a sovereign power
2. 2:  a detraction from or affront to dignity or importance

Since when does American law hold lèse majesté to be a crime?


I was shocked, though not entirely surprised, to hear Donald Trump say that Hillary Clinton should go to jail for having criticized him.  I've been voting for over 40 years, and I can't remember ever having encountered a candidate for public office who had such a thin skin.  In my opinion, Trump, if elected president, will do everything in his power to limit freedom of speech and freedom of the press because he simply cannot tolerate being criticized.  Apparently, he thinks he's entitled to exemptions even from matters having nothing to do with taxes.

Donald Trump, King of Fantasyville

I think the bottom line is that Donald Trump is popular because he gets away with many of the things that some folks would like to say and/or do but wouldn't dare.  He's politically incorrect--he says whatever's on his mind without regard to whether it offends people, and, when challenged, defends his right to be offensive.  He doesn't worry about the facts.  He "gets the girl," and that's close to the truth, literally--his current wife is 23 years younger that he is.  He probably pays much less in taxes than us non-millionaires.  And his fans eat it all up because they'd love to be in his boat.  You'll notice that I called them his fans, not his supporters.  This is a presidential candidate?  What do his fans think we're voting for, the next Wizard of Oz?!

Embracing low standards, or, perhaps, no standards :(

I think that one of the news commentators on MSNBC was correct when she said that Donald Trump is not held to the same standards as a politician because he's not one--he's a businessperson and an entertainer.  This perspective raises a disturbing question:  Do some of us Americans think it's perfectly acceptable for a businessperson to benefit from other people's misfortune, or to game the tax system in a way that most less wealthy people cannot, and quite possibly pay little or nothing in taxes?

Naturally, I can't find a news clip on the internet, but I have a distinct memory that Trump once said he could shot someone in Times Square and people would vote for him anyway.  Unfortunately, his current status as presumptive Republican nominee for president would seem to indicate that he's right.  It appears that some Americans don't care that Donald Trump has no principles.  After all, he's just an entertainer.

And this is the person who may end up being the next president of the United States?  I weep for my country.  How the might have fallen.  :(

Post-Pesach, plus politics, post

It's huntin' season again :)  (No animals will be harmed)
Yep, it's that time of year--we're looking for all the things we packed away before Passover.  We'll probably need at least another week to find everything.


A Conservative Jew reconsiders kitniyot
This year, the Conservative Movement's Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards declared kitniyot permissible during Pesach even for Ashkenazi Jews.  Being both a Conservative Jew and an Ashkenazit, I have now been given official permission to eat rice (well-checked for any chametz accidentally mixed in) and legumes on Pesach.  This would certainly make Pesach much easier for me, as I'm not only gluten-sensitive, but must also avoid white potatoes and other nightshades to prevent arthritis flare-ups.


That said, I may choose to continue avoiding kitniyot during Pesach in accordance with the teaching of Mishlei/Proverbs 1:8:

ח  שְׁמַע בְּנִי, מוּסַר אָבִיךָ;    וְאַל-תִּטֹּשׁ, תּוֹרַת אִמֶּךָ.	8 Hear, my son, the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the teaching of thy mother;

My mother was adamant in her belief that Pesach and its menu should be different from the rest of the year.  And since I can't eat wheat anyway, how else can I keep Pesach's menu different if not by avoiding kitniyot?


Politics
After Donald Trump's landslide victory in Indiana yesterday, he will almost certainly be the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States.  Personally, I think that his only skill is that he's mastered the media, and that his only goal is self-aggrandizement.


Friday, May 6, 2016 update:
I forgot about this Trump analysis.

It's a country, stupid

I'm not concerned about whether Donald Trump can think for himself, I'm concerned about whether he can think about anyone else--such as the citizens of an entire nation.  It seems to me that, for Trump, running for president of the United States is just another ego trip--we voters are just along for the ride.


And I don't trust him to choose good advisors because he appears to think that he doesn't need any.  I shudder to think what a government led by a man who seems to think that he knows everything he needs to know about heading a government despite having no government or diplomatic experience and who thinks that it's perfectly acceptable to insult women (despite the fact that we're half of his would-be voters), mock persons with disabilities, condemn an entire religious group, hate immigrants, despise diversity, and encourage violence--did I miss anything?--would be like.  And I hope I never have to find out.

The United States is a democracy, and heaven knows that I've been disappointed, even upset, by the outcome of many an election in my lifetime.  But never before have I been downright frightened that the "wrong" candidate might win.  I'm following the advice of the prophet Yirmiyahu/Jeremiah (29:7), and praying for the government.


It's the economy, stupid

Dragging my country's good name through the mud :(

Brussels and Pakistan are attacked by Radical Islamist terrorists, with hundreds dead or injured, and all some Republican candidates for president of the United States can talk about is who insulted whose wife first?  This isn't a political campaign, it's a schoolyard brawl, of the "You dissed my girlfriend" variety.  I'd call it a barroom brawl, but such a description might imply that the brawlers are adults.

AIPAC turns right :(

AIPAC Now Creepily Resembles the NRA.

AIPAC invited Trump because it's part of a political lobby's job . . .

. . . to cultivate relationships with those whose help might someday be needed.  Sigh.


Parashat Vayikra post and links here.

Donald Trump's Manhood Is No Side Issue — It's His Entire Campaign

That's J.J. Goldberg's opinion, and I think there may be some truth to it.

John Oliver debunks Trump myths

It's a long video, but well worth it.  Hat-tip:  Daily Kos.

Chaos reigns :(

Random violence
Here in New York City, it started with the "knock-out game," and has now advanced to random slashings and stabbings for no discernible reason.  Maybe it's time for me to re-read L'Étranger.  :(


A "con artist" is running for president--and winning primaries
What has the U.S. come to, that we American voters can't tell a candidate from a canapé?  (That sentence may not make much sense, but then again, neither does Donald Trump.)

More election politics

The NY Daily News on Palin's endorsement of Trump, courtesy of Daily Kos.

Stephen Colbert on Palin's endorsement of Trump (also courtesy of Daily Kos).  Note:  There's a link to Trevor Norah's "take" in the comments section--keep scrolling.

My least favorite subject,especially lately:Politics :(

I really didn't want to blog about this, but one of the few folks from real life who knows that I blog couldn't understand how I could avoid writing about.  Sigh.

I was really hoping that Donald Trump would just go away, but, apparently, enough voters approve of xenophobia and sexism to keep his campaign to become the Republican Party's candidate for president of the United States alive.  Mr. Trump wants to build a wall across the Mexican border to prevent illegal immigration of Mexican "rapists," and, noch besser (better yet), he expects the Mexicans to pay for it.  He also wants to put a halt to all Muslim immigration, as if the thousands who are fleeing from Middle-Eastern terrorism are terrorists themselves.  And he complains when female presidential hopefuls have the nerve to go to the ladies' room.  What has my country come to, that such a person is currently leading the polls regarding those seeking nomination as the presidential candidate of a major political party?