The 2016 Election and the Soft-on-Crime Democrats

I find this theory a little dubious, although interesting nevertheless.

From James Dobbins, at USA Today, "If anti-Trump protests grow, they could hand Donald the election":

Black Lives Matter protesters may help elect Donald Trump president, just as their predecessors did for Richard Nixon.

Scuffles broke out at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion on Friday after Trump canceled a rally citing security concerns. Earlier that day in St. Louis, Trump was repeatedly interrupted by demonstrators and police made almost three dozen arrests. On Saturday in Dayton, Ohio, a protester rushed the stage being subdued by security. Trump told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that events such as these would only increase his vote tally.

Trump may be on to something. The scenario evokes the turbulent election year of 1968 when Richard Nixon successfully cast himself as the “law and order” candidate against Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Violent crime had jumped 85% since Dwight Eisenhower had left office. Nixon charged that Democrats had adopted a do-nothing approach to this rising crisis. When Humphrey denounced the "storm trooper tactics" used by Chicago police in suppressing demonstrations at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention, his comment seemed to play into Nixon’s hands. Humphrey was attempting to placate his party’s left wing, but a Gallup poll at the time showed that 62% of Americans approved of the way Mayor Richard Daley handled the situation. Siding against the cops was bad politics.

Nixon’s stance that Democrats were soft on crime had a clear racial subtext, coming as it did in the wake of urban riots in Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Black militancy was on the rise, particularly after Martin Luther King was assassinated in April 1968. The races were divided on whether police brutality was a factor in the unrest. A 1968 Harris poll showed that 51% of blacks believed it was, compared to only 10% of whites. But Nixon knew where the votes were. Another Harris survey that September showed Nixon with a 20-point lead over Humphrey among respondents who blamed black militants as being a “major cause of the breakdown of law and order.”

Then as now, race and law enforcement were tightly intertwined issues. And, then as now, most people in general support law enforcement. In a June 2015 Gallup survey of confidence in American institutions, the police ranked third behind the military and small business in public esteem, with 52% having a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the men and women in blue. Donald Trump made his position clear in January when he said that "Police are the most mistreated people in this country."

This dynamic puts prospective Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in a bind...

Still more, but again, I'm skeptical.

It's been almost 50 years since 1968 and the culture has changed, dramatically so. And a 52 percent majority in Gallup is completely unreliable, since Gallup is the least trusted polling organization out there nowadays. I suspect lots of voters will be moved by Democrat arguments attacking Donald Trump as a racist, and blaming him for unrest. And don't underestimate the power of the media to push the narrative into overdrive. There were political assassinations in 1968 as well, which hopefully we will not have on 2016, but no doubt the deaths of MLK Jr. and Bobby Kennedy drove a lot of the demand for public order after the Democrat Convention in Chicago. It remains to be seen how all of this plays out this time around, but public sentiment is extremely divided, and things could go either way on such a volatile issue as political violence.

Trump's going to be running not just against the Democrats, but the entire collectivist media-entertainment-education complex. As it is USA Today reports that Millennials will flock to Hillary if Trump's the nominee. See, "Poll shows that Millennials would flock to Clinton against Trump."

If there was ever an election to determine the future of America (and the future of freedom itself), this year is shaping up to be it, by a long shot.

The Nazis Weren't Socialists

One of the things I hate the most about online debates is how conservatives always claim that the Nazi Party in Hitler's Germany was "socialist" and hence leftist.

It's just not true, although little I say is likely to persuade anyone at this point.

In any case, below is the comment I left at Avi Green's post, at the Astute Bloggers, "RON MARZ DOESN'T BELIEVE NAZIS WAS ACRONYM FOR SOCIALISTS":

Sorry, Avi, the Nazis, in the 1930s, went to exterminate their rivals as they came to power, particularly socialists and communists. To be a true socialist you have to abolish private property, something the Nazis never did. They saw the Soviet Union as a world Jewish conspiracy, and hated Marxism. These are all facts, found all over the literature on the Interwar period.

National Socialists were what you'd call the "reactionary right" today, people whose vision of the perfect society harked back to an earlier time, i.e., the vision of the "Teutonic Knights" and the "Aryan nation" of pure-blood medieval Germans. Socialists are Marxist, and their perfect society is in the future, under Utopian communism and the withering away of the state. The far right is reactionary, while the far left is radical. Nazis and socialists stand at the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

If you don't know this history, then you should. I don't know this guy Ron Marz, and I have no idea if he knows this history, but he's essentially right that the Nazis were not left-wing socialists as conservatives usually use the terminology. Yeah, it's complicated and intellectual, but it's the correct version on this topic.

I can of course append sources to my argument at the comment, if anyone's so interested, but then again, I'm not convinced I'd change anyone's mind. If you think the Nazis were leftists, academic sources and scholarly evidence to the contrary are hardly going to be persuasive.

Donald Trump's 'Unlikely Melting Pot' Campaign

This is amazing.

And it's all the more amazing that the Old Gray Lady's running this.

See, "Donald Trump's Tampa Office Is an Unlikely Melting Pot":

TAMPA — Mireya Linsky, born to a Jewish family in Cuba, came to the United States as a refugee at age 5. Her family lived in public housing here for several years and sometimes relied on assistance from Catholic Charities. She has spent the past 33 years working for the Hillsborough County School District.

So Mrs. Linsky, 55, understands that some may see certain contradictions in the fact that she is now spending several nights a week volunteering here at Donald J. Trump’s campaign office. “Like I’m just pulling the drawbridge up behind me,” she says.

Yet Mrs. Linsky is also quick to acknowledge a long list of racial fears and resentments that she says help explain why she is drawn to Mr. Trump: She is furious at undocumented workers who “come basically to see what they can get.” She is wary of Muslim Americans imposing their religion on communities in the United States. She is fearful of more American jobs being outsourced to China, India or Mexico. She even suspects President Obama “has a dislike for white folks.”

“We’re not taking care of our own,” she said.

Recently, Mr. Trump’s campaign has been engulfed by ugly images of mostly white Trump supporters facing off against, and sometimes attacking, young protesters, many of them black or Hispanic, at Trump rallies in Chicago, St. Louis and elsewhere.

But here in Tampa, in the week before the pivotal Florida primary, conversations with more than 20 volunteers showing up to make campaign calls or otherwise help out at a small Trump campaign office in an old cigar factory yielded some surprises on the subjects of race, ethnicity and bigotry.

For a campaign frequently depicted as offering a rallying point for the white working class, the people volunteering to help Mr. Trump here are noteworthy for their ethnic diversity. They include a young woman who recently arrived from Peru; an immigrant from the Philippines; a 70-year-old Lakota Indian; a teenage son of Russian immigrants; a Mexican-American.

They range the political spectrum, too, from lifelong Democrat to independent to libertarian to conservative Republican. To a person, they condemned and sometimes ridiculed David Duke and other white supremacists who have noisily backed Mr. Trump. “I totally do not agree with them,” said one volunteer, Andrew Cherry.

Yet like Mrs. Linsky, many spoke openly about how fears centered on race and ethnicity were at the heart of their support for Mr. Trump. To a large extent, they traced those fears to the scars they still bear from the Great Recession — lost jobs, drained 401(k)’s, home foreclosures, rising debt, the feeling that the country is broken.

More than anything, several Trump volunteers here said, the Great Recession exposed a corrupt, out-of-touch ruling class in Washington that allows big corporations to outsource jobs at will while doing nothing to address millions of illegal immigrants who compete for jobs and drain government coffers. In Mr. Trump, they say, they see a potential antidote to all of this. A man too wealthy to be bought or co-opted. A man with the blunt-force clarity to declare that he is ready to Make America Great Again.

“I think we’ve come to the conclusion that our country is falling apart, and we have to take care of it,” Mrs. Linsky said.

It would be hard to imagine more politically unfriendly turf for a Trump campaign office than the old Garcia and Vega cigar factory on Armenia Avenue. The factory looms over West Tampa, a Democratic stronghold long dominated by Latinos, especially Cuban-Americans. Today, the factory has been converted into space for start-ups. The campaign rents a small room on the second floor and uses a common area for its phone banks.

Early on Wednesday afternoon, Bob Peele, 62, pulled up to the back of the cigar factory in a pickup truck overflowing with Trump campaign signs. Mr. Peele, burly and bearded, wearing a Harley-Davidson hat and a T-shirt depicting a bald eagle, began unloading signs...

More.

What a great piece, totally not going with the left's "racist" Donald Trump narrative.

Hannah Davis on the Cover of Maxim (VIDEO)

At Us Magazine, "Hannah Davis Looks Seriously Sexy on the Cover of Maxim, Talks About Fiance Derek Jeter."

Video via Maxim:

Jackie Johnson's Beautiful Weather Forecast

Well, it was raining today during this morning's drive-time commute, but it's supposed to warm up to above-average temperatures by mid-week. The valleys could see temps in the high-80s. Amazing.

The rain has been welcomed. See LAT, "Drenched by 'March Miracle,' Northern California reservoirs inch toward capacity."

And here's Jackie, via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Donald Trump's Normal Campaign Monday (VIDEO)

Well, maybe all the protesting has passed.

At Politico, "Trump’s strange Monday: After a tumultuous weekend, his Ohio rally was among the most surprising things a Trump event can now be: Normal":

VIENNA, Ohio — It had all the trappings of a Donald Trump event, but in the end, something was missing.

Trump took his private, eponymous plane down a runway and parked it behind a stage. He enthralled throngs of fans while speaking at the appropriately named “Winner Aviation” outside Youngstown. He promised to build a border wall with Mexico, to fix a decades-old trade imbalance and to, more generally, “make America great again.” Most of all, he promised repeatedly that he’d win the election.

“I backed McCain. He lost. I backed Romney. He lost,” Trump said. “I said, ‘this time we’re gonna do it ourselves.'”

What the event lacked, however, was even a drop of the drama that defined Trump rallies over the weekend. Without a single interruption, Trump’s speech was a far cry from the violence of his events last week—and the exact opposite of a planned rally in Chicago where clashes between supporters and protesters led to the event being canceled.

Indeed, in the 2016 presidential campaign’s new normal, the rally was among the most surprising things a Trump event can be: normal.

With the protesters absent, the event—which served as Trump’s closing statement to his supporters—centered on the billionaire’s message to his backers: a Trump win in Ohio would all but make him the GOP presidential nominee. The polls suggest that could well happen. Trump and John Kasich are close, and the event here appeared an attempt to snatch a last-minute victory.

“Kasich cannot make America great again,” he said, ridiculing the governor for spending more time in New Hampshire “than Chris Christie,” the New Jersey governor and supporter who introduced Trump...

Keep reading.

GOP Evangelicals Hold Less Sway After Mini-Super Tuesday

This is interesting.

If Trump knocks out Rubio after a Florida win tomorrow (which looks pretty likely), and upcoming GOP calendar is extremely narrow for Ted Cruz, especially in terms of the evangelical vote.

At the Wall Street Journal, "After Tuesday, Evangelicals Hold Less Sway in GOP Nominating Calendar":

Missouri and North Carolina have gotten the least public attention among the five states that will vote on Tuesday. But they could be particularly meaningful for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

The two states are just about the last on the nominating calendar with large numbers of evangelical Christians, a group that Mr. Cruz has tried to consolidate. After Tuesday, the primary calendar shifts to states with smaller shares of evangelicals.

The evangelical shares of Missouri and North Carolina residents are 36% and 35%, respectively, according to data from the Pew Research Center. The only state with a larger evangelical population that has yet to vote is West Virginia, where 39% of residents identify as evangelical Christians. That state doesn’t vote until May.

Mr. Cruz’s campaign, which emphasizes social conservative values, was supposed to be built for states with large evangelical populations. But seven of the 10 states with the largest evangelical populations, according to Pew, have voted so far, and Donald Trump has won six of them: Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia. Mr. Cruz won only Oklahoma, which borders on his home state of Texas.

As upcoming primaries and caucuses move north and west, away from the states that were supposed to be Mr. Cruz’s base, he could use a win or two. Missouri and North Carolina would give any winning candidate a boost. Together, they award 124 delegates, more than Florida’s cache of 99, the biggest prize on Tuesday. They award their delegates proportionally, so Mr. Cruz could lose the states but still emerge with a prize.

Mr. Cruz may have greater success in Missouri than North Carolina...

Still more.

SUV Tailgater Loses Control and Crashes on I-41 at Little Chute, Wisconsin (VIDEO)

Heh.

At the Appleton Post-Crescent, "Watch SUV tailgate, crash on I-41":

It never pays to tailgate.

Deal of the Day: Bissell CleanView Upright Vacuum

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Plus, save on Easter toys.

More, save up to 70% on select SanDisk products.

BONUS: From Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few.

'Ben Shapiro Betrays Loyal Breitbart Readers in Pursuit of Fox News Contributorship'

That's the now deleted headline at Breitbart, which is now replaced with an apology from editor Joel Pollak, "Statement from Breitbart News Editor-at-Large and In-House Counsel Joel B. Pollak."

Pollak was apparently trying to "make light of" the whole Michelle Fields incident, her resignation, as well as Shapiro's, but it's not turning out too well (via Memeorandum).

More, from Hadas Gold, at Politico, "Breitbart piece mocking editor who resigned was written under father's pseudonym." (Via Memeorandum.)

Here's a cached version of the now-removed piece.

I'm not a huge Breitbart News fan, and probably less so in the future.

How Democrats Abandoned the Working Class and Spurred the Rise of Donald Trump

From Kyle Smith, at the New York Post (via Memeorandum and Right Wing News):

Inequality has risen. Jobs are going overseas. The more the stock market rises, the more the working class feels crushed by globalization.

And all of this has occurred exactly as Democrats have engineered it. Stuff happens, they say. The truth hurts.

Take it from Larry Summers, once one of President Obama’s leading economic advisers: “One of the challenges in our society is that the truth is kind of an equalizer,” Summers reportedly said in a candid moment in 2009. “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.” (Summers this week denied saying this.)

The elite professional class, in the 1950s one of the Republican party’s most reliable constituencies, became the very heart of the Democrats by the 1990s. The party of labor morphed into the party of lawyers. This didn’t happen by accident.

In his new book “Listen, Liberal, Or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People,” progressive commentator Thomas Frank (author of “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”) says Democrats need to take a good long look in the mirror if they want answers to why blue-collar workers are feeling abandoned and even infuriated by what used to be their party.

Many such voters are now backing Donald Trump, who is sketching out the problem with America in exactly the terms they agree with: Jobs are either going to Mexico, or going to Mexicans. Unchecked illegal immigration on the one hand and free trade on the other hand are driving down the wages of working-class Americans, or costing them their jobs outright.

This isn’t racism: angry Americans told they were losing their jobs at a doomed air-conditioner factory in Indiana wouldn’t have applauded if told production was moving to Canada instead of Mexico. Either way, they’re losing their jobs.

In Frank’s analysis, around 1972 the Democrats started to suspect their lunch-bucket workers were warmongering dinosaurs doomed by their reliance on dying Rust Belt industries. The party placed its future in the hands of groovy technocrats in non-union fields and wrote off the workers, who soon defected to the Republican party even though Republicans didn’t and don’t apologize for being the party of capital.

Blaming Republican Intransigence (TM) for liberalism’s failures, particularly in the Obama era, is a common excuse that Frank isn’t having. He points to areas such as Rhode Island and Chicago where Republicans are virtually extinct and finds that Democrats behave exactly the same way: They make mild clucking noises about inequality while taking donations and policy ideas from financiers (both R.I. and the City of Big Shoulders are run by former Wall Streeters) and outlining an economic future of enhanced “innovation” designed to tilt the economy even further in the direction of elite knowledge-economy workers and away from those without college degrees.

Innovation, Frank says, is often just code for new methods (from Uber to credit default swaps) to evade necessary protective regulations. Many such innovations pump up profits for rich entrepreneurs and shareholders by unloading employees with benefits in favor of part-timers and freelancers with no benefits. Democrats take big donations from such firms, laud them in speeches, and tell everyone else to get out of the way of the “disruption.”

There is some enticing evidence for Frank’s claim that Democrats deliberately shunned American workers...

Keep reading.

Plus, here's Frank's book, Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?

CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll: Donald Trump Leads Florida, 44-24 Percent Over Ted Cruz, with Marco Rubio's at 21 Percent (VIDEO)

Here, "Poll: Trump and Kasich neck-and-neck in Ohio; Trump leads in Florida" (via Memeorandum).

I haven't seen a single poll with Marco Rubio leading in Florida. Indeed, Trump's got an 18.1 point spread in RCP's average of Florida polling. Rubio's toast.

Ohio's another story, however. Kasich, who is Ohio's governor, has a 2 point spread in RCP's average, and CBS has him tied with Trump for Tuesday's election. It should be pretty amazing, although Ohio won't matter too much if Trump wins Florida. Rubio will be knocked out but there's simply now way Kasich can catch Trump. Ted Cruz will emerge as the main rival in a two man race, but Trump will be prohibitive. The GOPe's schemes to stop the front-runner will have petered out. I don't know what else establishment hacks can do, other than sabotage the convention. But we'll see.

More at Memeorandum.

Plus, watch, at CBS Face the Nation, "CBS News Battleground Tracker Poll: Is Trump on track to win nomination?"

Deal of the Day: Save Up to 45% on Mountain House Meals

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BONUS: From Alonzo Hamby, Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century.

And, from Frances FitzGerald, Way Out There In the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War.

Local News Coverage of Violent Donald Trump Rally in Chicago (VIDEO)

At the video, pretty intense video of the Friday night rally in Chicago.

And more on the story, at the Chicago Tribune, "After-effects of Trump Chicago cancellation felt in presidential race":

The after-effects from the protest-fueled cancellation of Donald Trump's Chicago rally reverberated nationally throughout presidential campaigns in both parties Saturday, just days before Illinois holds its primary.

Skirmishes between Trump supporters and demonstrators laid bare the country's deep and angry political divide, and Trump, during a speech in Ohio, contended supporters of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders were behind a "planned attack" by "professional" protest organizers Friday night.

"They were taunted, they were harassed by these other people. These other people, by the way, some represented Bernie, our communist friend," Trump said at an airport rally outside Dayton that was interrupted by Secret Service agents surrounding the candidate when a protester tried to take the stage and was arrested.

"(Sanders) should really get up and say to his people, 'Stop. Stop. Not me. Stop.' They said Mr. Trump should get up this morning and tell his people to be nice. My people are nice folks. They are. They're great," he said.

Later Saturday, at a raucous rally in Kansas City, Trump was interrupted several times by protesters.

“We’re going to take our country back from these people,” he said. “These are bad, bad people.”

Trump also threatened to “start pressing charges against all these people” and said the arrest records are “going to ruin the rest of their lives” and would stop the protest interruptions...

Still more.

BONUS: At the Los Angeles Times, "How black, Latino and Muslim college students organized to stop Trump's rally in Chicago."

Donald Trump Attacks John Kasich Over Free Trade, Says Governor Abandoned Ohio

Good.

At the Wall Street Journal:

CLEVELAND — Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump attacked Gov. John Kasich for supporting free-trade policies the billionaire businessman said have hurt Ohio’s job market and economy, and he accused the governor of abandoning the state while running for president.

During a rally before several thousand supporters here on Saturday, Mr. Trump accused Mr. Kasich of letting the state’s coal and steel industries fade and said Ohio’s economy was only saved by the discovery of shale oil in recent years.

He also accused the two-term governor of being weak on immigration, spending too much time in New Hampshire on the campaign trail and not addressing the state’s problems.

“Why didn’t he drop out?” Mr. Trump said at a convention center near the city airport. “Now he says he is going to win Ohio? I really don’t think so.”

Mr. Trump has escalated his attacks on Mr. Kasich as Tuesday’s Ohio’s primary draws near.  The businessman had 37% support among Republican primary voters in Ohio, while Mr. Kasich registered 34% support, according to a Real Clear Politics average of recent polls.

Mr. Trump’s event here was disrupted about a half a dozen times by protesters, while his supporters chanted “Trump! Trump!” as the protesters were escorted out. The protests appeared spontaneous, in contrast to the seemingly more-organized confrontation at a Chicago campaign rally on Friday that was consequently canceled over security concerns...

More.

Lily Aldridge Outtakes Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2016 (VIDEO)

The lovely Lily, for Sports Illustrated.



PREVIOUSLY: "Victoria's Secret Swim Special: Lily Aldridge (VIDEO)."

Amber Lee's Low-Pressure System Forecast

I didn't even see the rain on Friday. My wife texted me, worried about my son, who was walking home from school, about the harsh downpour around 3:00pm.

It cleared up today though, but it's cool out.

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Secret Service Rushes to Protect Donald Trump at Dayton, Ohio, Rally (VIDEO)

At Mashable, "Donald Trump's Dayton rally was tense as security detail stormed stage."

Also, at the NBC News, via Memeorandum, "Secret Service Rushes Stage to Protect Donald Trump at Ohio Rally."

And watch, at CBS News:

Donald Trump Supporter Birgitt Peterson Explains 'Heil, Hitler' Salute at Chicago Protest

Well, I like Trump and all, but I wouldn't want my supporters performing Nazi salutes. Just bad optics, you know?

At the Chicago Tribune, "Trump supporter explains what led to 'Heil, Hitler' salute at canceled Chicago rally":

Yorkville woman who made this gesture, causing an Internet stir, explains what led to it https://t.co/C9FF8YZIjK pic.twitter.com/JvnxbjOEjR

— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) March 13, 2016

A 69-year-old Yorkville woman and her husband are defending her actions after a Tribune photo showed her giving a Nazi salute during an altercation with protesters outside UIC Pavilion Friday night following the ill-fated Donald Trump rally.

The photo of Trump supporter Birgitt Peterson went viral on social media this weekend, causing some to wonder about her motivation for making the gesture.

Peterson, who said she emigrated from West Berlin and has been a U.S. citizen since 1982, said the salute came during an argument with protesters and was simply her response to them giving her the Nazi gesture.

Her husband, Donald, insisted: "We're not skinheads, we're not Nazis."

Birgitt Peterson said she and her husband had left the UIC Pavilion after the rally was canceled because of security concerns. "I came out and lit a cigarette and all of a sudden, I was surrounded,'' she told the Tribune on Saturday.

She was wearing a Trump T-shirt, and a group of about 20 protesters began speaking to them, she said.

"The one lady, she said: 'Hey, white supremacist,'" Peterson said.

A woman grabbed the orange lanyard Peterson had around her neck that identified her as a member of the Illinois delegation to a past Republican convention, and then the woman let it go, she said.

Peterson said she told them: "Girlfriend, don't do this. If you want to talk, you have the right to be here to protest. I have the right to be here."

A protester told Peterson that she wanted the woman to "stay safe'' and urged Peterson and her husband to leave, she said. But they were cursing at them also, her husband added.

A young woman who had a shirt comparing Trump to Hitler accused the couple of voting for the Ku Klux Klan, Birgitt Peterson said, quoting the woman as saying, "Hitler is Donald Trump ... This is what you are. Why did you vote for this man?"

Peterson said she responded: "You should know that I haven't voted for anybody because the primary is not until Tuesday."

She said the protesters told her, "You are here to vote for Hitler," and they started giving a Nazi salute.

Peterson said she told the protesters she was German and asked them if they knew what the salute meant.

"So Birgitt decided to teach them to do it,'' said Donald Peterson, who insisted they were "not Nazis'' and absolutely not supporters or "saluting'' Adolf Hitler.

"I lifted my arms," she said, adding that in German she said, "Hail to the German Reich."

A protester who was photographed with Peterson, Michael Joseph Garza, told the Tribune on Saturday he did not believe Peterson was responding to anyone else when she raised her arm in the salute.

"I went up to her and said, 'Ma'am, please leave, we have understood you, we have made a (path),'" Garza recalled. "She said, 'Go? Back in my day, this is what we did,' basically, and then she hailed Hitler."

Jason Wambsgans, the Tribune photographer who took the picture, said he had more than a dozen photos of Peterson giving the Nazi salute but did not see any protesters doing the gesture and has no photos showing that...

Still more.

I wish she hadn't made that salute, for whatever reason. This is the social media age. If you make yourself look like a Nazi, then you're going to be smeared as a Nazi. Simple as that.

Back from Pearson Revel Community Forum at the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Hotel, Dana Point

I attended a teaching conference this weekend in Dana Point.

I tweeted:

At a teaching conference today, in Dana Point. Taking a break from the #TedCruz / #DonaldTrump purity wars. pic.twitter.com/6WxLqLV1Dp

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) March 11, 2016

A lovely hotel, particularly the views overlooking the harbor. The weather was beautiful when I got there Friday morning, but by mid-afternoon we had more of the El Niño downpours.

No matter. It was fun and informative.