I’ve always voted Republican. Until now.; Washington Post, 8/17/16

Daniel Akerson, Washington Post; I’ve always voted Republican. Until now. :

"And I have always voted for Republicans for president. Not this year.

The compelling rationale behind this decision: leadership. A good leader must demonstrate such qualities as competence, integrity, empathy, character and temperament. Hillary Clinton has these essential qualities. Donald Trump does not.

Trump simply lacks the competence to serve as president of the United States...

Long ago, I learned an old Navy saying from a good friend and now-retired admiral: “Ship, shipmate, self.” This motto set the priorities for my life during my service. The civilian equivalent would be “country, fellow citizen, self.” As individuals and as a nation, we must aspire to serve the greater good. We must exhibit the empathy that places the greater good of the nation and its people above individual self-interest.

Unfortunately, Trump has appealed to the lowest common denominators in our society: prejudice, xenophobia and intolerance...

What kind of person equates the sacrifice of the loss of a child to that of creating jobs or making money?"

Polish media in UK shocked by post-Brexit hate crimes; BBC News, 6/28/16

BBC News; Polish media in UK shocked by post-Brexit hate crimes:

"Police are investigating several cases, including racist graffiti daubed on the Polish and Social Cultural Association in London, and cards with the words "Leave the EU, no more Polish vermin" being posted through the letter boxes of Polish families and distributed outside primary schools in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

Anecdotal reports of such abuse have also appeared widely on social media in the UK.

"Had to issue a red card to the family of patient who were abusing a Polish nurse. They told her 'pack your bags as you will be deported soon'", posted @secret_nhs, an anonymous Twitter account purportedly written by an NHS manager."

The Observer view on Donald Trump; The Observer, 5/28/16

The Observer Editorial; The Observer view on Donald Trump:

"A line must be drawn. Illusions must be discarded. The truth must be told. Trump, with his innate, rich man’s hostility to social justice and equal rights, with his greedy love of big business and corporate tax cuts, with his scornful disdain for green policies and climate change science, with his alarming ignorance of strategic realities in the Middle East and east Asia, with his cruel and ruthless contempt for the weak, the less privileged and the vulnerable of this world, with his foolhardy isolationism and protectionism, with his loathsome self-adoration, and with his hateful fear-peddling is a menacing problem, not a passing phenomenon.

Something not dissimilar to the rise of Trump is happening across Europe, where xenophobic and racist parties of the right are advancing, most recently in Austria last week. Trump-ism, for want of a better word, is not something with which tidy, reasonable compromises can be made. It must not be appeased, bought off or left to fester. The only thing to do with Trump-ism, wherever it appears, is to oppose it, fight it, and defeat it. As Elizabeth Warren says, that critical fight must start now."

‘The Trump Effect’: Hatred, Fear And Bullying On The Rise In Schools; Huffington Post, 4/13/16

Christina Wilkie, Huffington Post; ‘The Trump Effect’: Hatred, Fear And Bullying On The Rise In Schools:

"It was only a matter of time before kids started picking up the aggressive, divisive language that’s become a hallmark of the 2016 presidential campaign.

According to a new report by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center titled “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the Presidential Campaign on our Nation’s Schools,” the race is stoking fears and racial tensions in America’s classrooms...

The report identified two troubling trends: more openly racist and vicious bullying of minorities, and more fear and anxiety among immigrants and minorities about what would happen to them if certain candidates for president are elected.

The survey did not name specific candidates, but teachers named Trump, the Republican front-runner, in more than 1,000 comments — five times more often than they mentioned any of the other candidates."