Reflections on Super Tuesday

The New Neo Posted on by

It certainly was clear even before today that Donald Trump was going to win a plurality in most of the states having primaries today, and that’s what has happened (even though all the results are not in yet). But my fervent hope was that one of the pair of either Cruz or Rubio would pull ahead of the other, and that the latter would then drop out prior to March 15. This is, quite literally, the only way that Trump could lose the nomination.

And that is my disappointment this evening: so far, each has gotten some encouragement to stay in. I’d say that so far it seems as though Cruz is doing somewhat better than Rubio. That’s fine with me, but if so, I want his dominance over Rubio to be unequivocal, and it’s not.

Of course, the presence of Kasich and Carson is still a factor. I have no idea why anyone is still voting for either of them, but there are just enough doing so to affect the results. Although it’s hard to say exactly what that effect is, my guess is that Kasich takes away mostly from Rubio (for example, it seems to have been quite a factor in Vermont), and Carson takes away from both Trump and Cruz.

So to reiterate, now I continue to hope that one of the two second-place candidates—and I assume it would be Rubio—drops out before March 15. But I don’t have much sense that it will actually happen. What do you think?

It’s Super Tuesday

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP]

Not so very super in my book.

Here’s a thread for discussing it, including your experiences if you’re voting today.

I fully expect Donald Trump to do very very well. I fully expect his supporters to be ecstatic, vindictive, and mocking of others in their response. I fully expect the MSM to cover the results as though it means Trump is the inevitable nominee.

He’s not inevitable, of course. But all options open to the GOP to stop him are bad, and will create a backlash. The best option, in my opinion, remains the necessity for one of the current leaders (Cruz or Rubio) to swerve in the game of Chicken they are playing, and to do so well before March 15th. I am hoping that one of them does so much better today than the other in so many states that it becomes clear which one must drop out, but I don’t think that will happen. I’ve been wishing it for a long time, and they have continued to be very evenly matched.

If one or the other drops out, Trump still might win the whole thing and become the nominee. But at least we’d have a better gauge of the actual percentage of his support among GOP voters.

Here’s an article on how, although the fat lady is practicing her scales in the wings, she hasn’t started singing yet and won’t today. And here’s one on what the Democrats have in store for a Trump nomination (something I’ve written about many times here):

As Donald Trump seems poised for a huge night Tuesday, Democrats see his stunning ascent and controversial, celebrity-driven business empire as a golden opportunity.

“Those bankruptcies screwed a lot of people — and not just hedge fund yuppies,” said a top strategist aligned with a pro-Clinton super PAC. “His idea of ‘winning’ has involved a lot of bad behavior — and the victims are exactly the profile of Trump voters: blue-collar whites.”

For months, key campaign operatives inside the Republican Party establishment were supremely confident that Trump would implode long before this moment. Instead, the GOP is now facing an existential crisis not seen in more than a generation as much of the party leadership and many of its top figures are in open revolt against Trump’s candidacy heading into Super Tuesday.

The potential liabilities lurking in Trump’s background are hardly a secret. The real estate magnate’s occasional business failings and colorful personal life have filled the pages of New York tabloids for decades.

Storing its ammunition for the general election, one pro-Democratic super PAC, Priorities USA, has taken a few jabs at Trump, choosing instead to portray the businessman as a reflection of the Republican Party.

Indeed, they don’t call the GOP “the stupid party” for nothing.

I’ve been crying in the wilderness for many months, posting articles about it and writing to people trying to galvanize them into these sort of attacks on Trump (including the “Trump vs. blue collar people” that Democrats are said to be planning). But such attacks from the GOP candidates only started quite recently, and way too late IMHO.

I said as much very explicitly in this post from late January:

This information is all in the public domain, and so far his opposition isn’t using it. Perhaps his GOP opponents haven’t used it so far because they thought he’d fade on his own. Or each one of them didn’t want to become his special target. Or they thought they could attack him on his politics. That hasn’t seemed to work so far. But it seems to me that, if a guy is making a lot of promises to you, and telling you what a great negotiator and dealmaker he is, and that’s why you should elect him””he’s a doer who does great things””you’d do well to look at some of his deals that went bad, his behavior during them, and the consequences. If he’s a liar, he might just be lying to you.

One thing I think we can safely say is that the Democrats will use this stuff against Trump if he is the nominee. It makes him look terrible: liar, con man, rich elitist bullying the little guy.

Hey, they don’t read neo-neocon; what can I say?

So, here we are. Fasten your seat belts for Super Tuesday.

So, what is Trump saying here about deportation?

The New Neo Posted on by

“Things are negotiable.”

Read the whole thing, including the comments, which add a missing sentence to the quote (“and they are going to go out”).

Too much to summarize here, but my takeaway is the following: everything Trump says is conditional and mutable. It may or may not express his intent at any given moment, but that intent can change on a dime, and several times. Even more than most politicians he will say what he feels he needs to in order to woo votes.

On immigration specifically, he has long indicated his position is that he will deport people and let them back in an expedited process of some kind, in some way he decrees to be “fair.” And that a wall will be built. The net effect is very similar to just about all the other GOP candidates’ policies, only less detailed and less reliable.

But his supporters don’t see it that way, and won’t see it that way.

And this just emphasizes what he’s said before. As blogger “Fuzzy Slippers” said in the comments section of LI:

Do you not understand that for Trump everything is negotiable. He said it, it’s one of the few true things he’s said on the campaign trail.

Why do you cling to your fantasy about Trump while the real Trump smacks you about the head and shoulders with the fact that he is not only pandering but that he knows full well what he is proposing is the “out” deal? The first one the table, the one you know is total crap. You get that, right? You read his book? You know that this is all bluff and bluster designed to get what he really wants (again, read his book).

Fuzzy adds that Trump is a simpleton. With that, I disagree. I think he is very canny about the things he’s canny about. That doesn’t mean I want him as president or trust him as far as I can throw him.

Iranian elections, 2016: who are the moderates?

The New Neo Posted on by

Iranian voters have chosen a host of reform candidates in their recent election, and this would seem like good news. Many writers are treating it as such (see this, for example).

Others are not the least bit sure. Jonathan S. Tobin in Commentary is certainly one of them, and his take on it contains a few details I hadn’t been aware of before this election:

We already knew that in Iran’s faux democratic system, a Guardian Council controlled by Khamenei vetted all of the possible candidates for office and disqualified virtually all those who had any real inclination to transform the country from a theocratic tyranny into something less awful. So, no matter what Rouhani or anyone else might say, the election winners that are called “moderates” in accounts of the vote are not actually moderate by any reasonable definition.

Bloomberg’s Eli Lake explains the reality of the election in a piece in which he points out that one of the victors considered a reformer is the same person who has called for the execution of leaders of the Green Movement that led protests against the regime in 2009 that ended in bloodshed and repression. Two others are former intelligence ministers that murdered dissidents. Others on those lists of moderates have made it clear that they resist the label and consider themselves part of the Islamist mainstream that supports the status quo. What apparently has happened is that faced with the disqualification of all of their candidates, reformers have endorsed others that do not share their views. That gives them the opportunity to declare victory today but is meaningless in terms of the impact of the vote on the future of Iranian society.

Please read the whole thing. The question of what is an Iranian “moderate” and who actually controls the country—and who will control it in the foreseeable future—is an important one in understanding what might be happening there. One thing of which I’m fairly sure, though, is that the election expresses the will of many of Iran’s people to take the country in a more moderate direction, a desire they’ve had for years and one that’s been thwarted for a long time.

Is Trump the GOP’s Frankenstein’s monster?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “physicguy” has this to say:

Just released over at American Thinker: the article deals with the death of the GOP. I agree, and I think the last paragraph sums it all up very well:

“The real blame rests on the Republican leadership in Congress. They created the vacuum that made Donald Trump possible. Absent opposition to Obama, looking with disdain upon their voters, ignoring all of their campaign promises, and governing against the will of their voters is why Donald Trump is even in the race.

I disagree, at least partly—and my disagreement is almost sure to spark outrage. It’s an outrage and a resultant discussion I’ve had many times here already, long before the candidacy of Donald Trump brought it to a head.

So I would amend that quote that physicsguy offered in his comment to say that it was the perception of what the GOP in Congress was doing or not doing, and at least in part a misperception about what they actually could do to stop Obama, that is responsible for at least some of Donald Trump’s support.

Over the years, I have written on the general topic of the GOP in Congress so many times I cannot count them, both in posts and in the comments section (just a few of the many examples are this, this, and this). Because I am part of the blogosphere and check in with blogs and comments around the blogosphere regularly, and have done so for over a decade, I have long been hyper-aware of the growing and increasingly bitter anger and disdain on the part of what you might call the GOP base.

Don’t get me wrong. I actually share some of it; quite a bit of it. So I’m not saying that Congress has covered itself in glory or has done what it promised. No, most definitely not. But (as I argued in some of those linked posts and comments, and many others) it has done more—and more to stop Obama—than most people realize. I don’t have time right now to write a tome about this, especially since it’s a tome I have written before. Trump is a demagogue, but he has been following a path prepared by other demagogues in the blogosphere, on Twitter and other social media, and on talk shows, who have had their own reasons for whipping people up into a veritable frenzy of rage.

I’ve watched it happen. Trump is the fruit.

Part of the reason the anger is so widespread, however, is that the Obama administration’s success in getting what it wants, and doing that in spite of the GOP controlling Congress, has been almost overwhelmingly galling. I have certainly felt the impotent rage bubble up inside me many times. But I have also weighed the options, and although I think the GOP could and should have done more and are not blameless, the “more” was not always clear and probably would have pleased the base but probably alienated everyone else (shut down government; send bill after bill to Obama’s desk for him to merely veto and in order to pass those bills in the Senate the cloture/filibuster rule would have had to have been suspended for all of them). I think the GOP made the wrong calculation and should have done more of that (see this, for example), but it was hardly easy or simple to say that the results (an Obama veto, for example) would have been worth it, although it would have had its pluses (I’ve written in greater detail about this topic in those links above, and in other posts too).

One of those “other posts” was this one, and I’ll quote what I already said there about a year ago:

I am aware that the Republicans in Congress are split between the conservatives and the others, and so they are not going to unify on all things (especially the tough topics) any more than pundits on the right will or blog commenters on the right will. Perhaps even less. Why would anyone expect a sudden transformation into unity, and in particular unity in the direction you would like to see?

In addition, Republicans in Congress cannot do what is impossible, even if you’d like them to and even if they wanted to do exactly whatever you want. They cannot, for example, pass any law they wish, even though they have the majority, even if they were completely united, because of the lack of 60 votes in the Senate. Cloture and Senate rules mean that the Democrats can hold up a vote a long as the Democrats have 40 votes to do so.

Even if the Republicans boldly changed the rules about that (which would have its own dangers) and made it so that things could come to a vote in the Senate by simple majority, guess what? That wouldn’t lead to Republican success in getting a law in place because the president happens to be a Democrat and he has vowed to veto everything they pass that he doesn’t like. The GOP lacks the votes to get past the veto. Do you really think they should undo the filibuster (a very radical step) merely for the sake of putting bills before Obama that he would then veto? Or should the Republicans use the option of holding back government funding in a battle that would ultimately lead to a government shutdown (not just of a single function, but of many, because Obama would veto every single bill that cut funding of any of his pet projects) that the people””carefully guided to this point of view by the MSM””would almost certainly blame on the Republicans, causing a backlash?

As we know, the Republican Party is currently split between conservatives and RINOS or “establishment” types, so is it any surprise that the latter group would not be fond of the two options I just outlined? Even some conservatives don’t like them, and I can’t say I blame them. I am torn about what I would do myself if I were a member of Congress.

The above—as well as the post I’m writing now—is not some sort of apologia for the GOP in Congress, offered because I’m in their thrall or even especially fond of them. I’m not. In fact I’ve never been an admirer of politicians as a whole and only admire a relative few, and then with reservations. But I try not to expect the impossible just because I might want it, even if I want it a lot. Unfortunately, what I’ve observed over the years is a growing desire for the unreasonable and/or impossible and then a growing demand for the unreasonable and/or impossible. This, coupled with an ignorance on the part of too many people in the US today on both sides about how government actually works (not the readers here, of course)—that is, ignorance of things as basic as what it takes to override a veto and that sort of thing—has helped to feed this enormous rage. It is a rage so great that it is leading to the success of Donald Trump, something that would not be occurring without that rage.

[NOTE: I’m not naive enough to think that this post (even if people were to read and ponder every single link in it to all my previous pieces on the subject) will convince a single angry person who previously disagreed with me. But I’m writing it anyway because it describes what I have seen over the years, which has been dramatic.]

Jeff Sessions endorses Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Everyone’s making a fuss about Jeff Sessions’ endorsement of Trump.

Before I get into the details, I want to establish one thing at the outset: personally, endorsements mean zero to me and always have. Of course, I understand they matter in general, because they matter to many other people. But it seems to me they only should matter to someone who hasn’t got the time to do his/her own research and make up his/her own mind based on the candidate’s character and stand on the issues, and who would rather just adopt someone else’s pre-digested opinion.

It’s kind of like a movie critic’s review, which I find equally worthless except to give me an idea what a movie is about. I guess I’ve never been a big one for following the opinion of others. And with politics, I think I qualify as someone who does her own research.

Now, with Jeff Sessions and Trump it seems that a lot of people found it shocking that a man known and respected for his conservatism would come out for Trump. But I don’t find it the least bit shocking and not even at all surprising, because of special circumstances connected with Sessions. In fact, I would have considered it a shock had he not endorsed Trump. Here’s why.

Sessions has been the go-to conservative guy in the Senate for handling illegal immigration issues, a hardliner who advised Trump heavily almost from the start when Trump put out his policy paper, which was apparently either written by Sessions or written with heavy consultation with Sessions. I also would guess that for Sessions the immigration question trumps (sorry, could not even begin to resist) everything else. Everything.

Put yourself in Sessions’ place and imagine you’d been working for years and years in the Senate, casting your pearls of immigration wisdom before Senate swine and having them rejected. An intensely frustrating and wearisome task, like so many in the Senate. And then a black swan named Trump swims or flies into view. He not only says he’s tough on immigration, he says how much he respects you and to prove it he has you basically write his platform and plan his program for him.

Wow and double wow. So when Trump rises and rises in the polls, for you it is like a dream come true. Instead of spinning your wheels trying to convince your fellow senators to do things they aren’t ready to do, you can hitch your wagon to this star (yeah, mixed metaphor) and ride it all the way to the power to create your own system to your own specifications on an issue that has mattered to you for so very long. Trump’ll be the nominal head and have the final say, but he’ll give you free rein.

Or so Trump says.

I don’t think there’s a politician in the world who could resist that sort of enticement. My guess is that Trump also explicitly offered Sessions something, an “immigration czar” position or something of the sort.

Another reason the temptation could not be resisted is that if Sessions were to back Cruz—far more aligned with Sessions in background and general conservative philosophy—he would have to face the problem that Cruz isn’t doing very well and that the odds for his victory are not good. My guess is that Sessions delayed his Trump endorsement until that fact was fairly clear, and that if Cruz had been doing a lot better, Sessions would have jumped on his bandwagon instead and probably have been a lot more happier deep down inside about it than he is about backing Trump.

But that didn’t happen, and Sessions decided that, if he didn’t get aboard with Trump now, Trump might turn to someone else to help him design the program if elected. And that would shut Sessions out. He could not run that risk, because he thinks Trump has a much better chance of being elected.

Hence, the Session endorsement. Really, I couldn’t imagine that he would have done otherwise.

[NOTE: A very different attitude was expressed by a different conservative senator, Ben Sasse.]

The model…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is not the territory:

Presently, the best climate models fall many orders of magnitude short of the power and intricacy needed to effectively predict the long-term climate patterns that emerge from the interactions of all these planetary systems. And that’s not a failure of science; it’s just the reality of how tough the problem is.

Predictions are made by building models using the smartest simplifications we have thought of and running them on the most powerful computers ever built. Basically, it’s the best we can do right now.

But there is a major failure of science going on.

The failure is the lack of transparency and honesty about how feeble these models are and how much we should stake on their all-too-fallible forecasts. Thus the same problem continues: climate science has once again botched a prediction that its models were underequipped to make.

That is my main objection to AGW.

Obligatory Oscar fashion post

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night I missed the Oscars entirely. No great loss. But I had to catch up with my favorite part—pretty much my only favorite part—the fashions.

In keeping with the topsy-turvy nature of today’s world, this “best” and “worst” selection seemed utterly arbitrary. Some of the “best” were good and some awful; some of the “worst” were bad and some good.

Fitting, isn’t it?

So here I present just a couple of examples.

Here’s a “worst” that is pretty bad, although by no means the very worst. Heidi, Heidi, what were you thinking? I think she may have been thinking “this is what we wear to a tea party in 2016.” A real tea party, not a political one. If so, she should rethink:

heidiklum

Here’s a “best” that’s lovely, classic and a bit retro, not too exposed but still showing off the body:

jennifergarner

But why was this perfectly acceptable and really rather pleasant gown considered a “worst”? Nothing especially special but flattering and timeless:

tinafey

And while we’re at it, why would this be a “best”? It looks like it’s designed to make a beautiful woman look as bad as possible:

Olivia Wilde

That last one reminds me of this.

Postscript to Saturday’s “Trump tyrant” post

The New Neo Posted on by

Hey, I get busy for a day and don’t get on my computer, and when I return I see there are 158 comments to plow through in the “tyrant” thread. No better proof of the fact that discussions around the blogosphere are more heated than ever these days.

The post used this quote by Donald Trump to indicate that he has, as I said, “tyrannical impulses.” I’ll repeat the quote here, just to remind you what we were talking about:

And one of the things I’m going to do, and this is only going to make it tougher for me, and I’ve never said this before, but one of the things I’m going to do if I win ”” and I hope I do and we’re certainly leading ”” is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when The New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected. You see, with me, they’re not protected because I’m not like other people but I’m not taking money. I’m not taking their money. So we’re going to open up those libel laws folks and we’re going to have people sue you like you never got sued before. We have many things to do. We have many, many things to do.

It occurred to me when I read some of the comments to the post that some people were defending Trump by arguing the merits of the current defamation laws re the press, and saying that they disagreed with those laws. So that’s what prompted this postscript.

The operating case is NY Times vs. Sullivan, which protects news outlets from libel suits for printing falsehoods except in the case of actual malice. Proving malice requires, among other things, knowledge of error and purposeful publishing anyway. That is a very high standard for establishing guilt, and of course NY Times vs. Sullivan could be overruled, and we could have a discussion on the merits of that, and no doubt it would be an interesting discussion.

For example, we could ponder this background to the case:

Before this decision, there were nearly US $300 million in libel actions outstanding against news organizations from the Southern states, and it had caused many publications to exercise great caution when reporting on civil rights, for fear that they might be held accountable for libel.[citation needed] After The New York Times prevailed in this case, news organizations were free to report the widespread disorder and civil rights infringements. The Times maintained that the case against it was brought to intimidate news organizations and prevent them from reporting illegal actions of public employees in the South as they attempted to continue to support segregation.

After Sullivan, the rule was this:

…”the First Amendment protects the publication of all statements, even false ones, about the conduct of public officials except when statements are made with actual malice (with knowledge that they are false or in reckless disregard of their truth or falsity).”

As I said, we certainly could have an argument on the merits about that. For example, if you think that sets too high a bar for defamation and you think the press is now abusing it, how could Sullivan be overruled, and would that be a good thing or a bad thing? Does actual malice need to be proved? If it didn’t need to be proved, couldn’t the law be used to sue for honest errors, in order to silence opposition and freedom of the press? How we would we know if the pendulum had swung too far?

Do you really think I’d devote a post to calling someone a tyrant who merely brought that subject up, and questioned whether Sullivan set the bar for defamation too high? If you think that, you don’t understand where I’m coming from, and where I’ve been coming from for my entire blogging life. If you misunderstand me that deeply, that’s certainly discouraging, to say the least.

I personally have some problem with Sullivan as it stands, and I also have problems with doing away with it, and have never been able to decide if its a net plus or minus on the whole. As I said, that be a worthwhile discussion.

That’s not what that post was about. And it’s not what Trump said—and if it had been, there would be no quarrel whatsoever between Trump and me on the subject.

What Trump actually said was that if elected he himself is (he used the word “I”) somehow going to “open up the libel laws.” In the post, I wrote the following:

I wonder, also, how one “opens up” laws. I’d be awfully curious to hear Trump explain (extemporaneously, without consulting others)””other than to say he’ll do it, and it will be great.

I would like to know whether Trump knows what our current liberal laws are based on, and how they might be changed.

Trump did not refer to Sullivan by name, but one can assume that the case is at least a part (probably a large part) of what he must have meant, and since Trump has sued many times for defamation I can only assume he knows something about the law of defamation. So, how does one “open up” laws as president? He doesn’t discuss how, so he is either just threatening the press so that they don’t criticize him (part of his tyrannical impulse, by the way) or he is planning some sort of strange executive action on it (also what tyrants do) or he is planning to pressure judges to change the law or he is letting us know what he wants to do.

In connection with what might actually be in Trump’s mind, notice that in that post I used the word “impulses” (“point to the fact that he has tyrannical impulses“) and emphasized that word with italics, to indicate that I am speaking of Trump’s wishes and druthers, not necessarily what he could actually accomplish. I would hope that our court system and constitution are strong enough to resist his tyrannical impulses (and “intent,” another word I used in the post). But it is highly possible that they are not. And to say “Hillary is no better” is scant comfort.

We are currently in the primary season. Super Tuesday is tomorrow. If one is choosing a candidate as presidential GOP nominee one would do well not to choose one with stated and demonstrated tyrannical impulses. That was my point, and I think I made it clear. But many people seem to want a strong man to make things all better, and they seem to be trusting Trump to do exactly what they want, no more and no less.

I used to think there were more people in the GOP who were wary of tyranny than there were among the members Democratic Party. There still might be more—a few more. Perhaps. But not nearly as many as I used to think.

Want proof that Trump’s a tyrant? You got it.

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP for emphasis.]

I mean that literally.

I’ve written before that Trump’s history with power and government, and much of what he actually advocates with his own mouth, point to the fact that he has tyrannical impulses that are unchecked by any knowledge of and/or respect for much of the Constitution. I’ve written before about his lack of respect for free speech, and his interest in undermining it.

Now we have candidate Trump (soon to be Republican nominee Trump, if his supporters have anything to say about it, which they do) stating that if he’s president he intends to do this [emphasis mine]:

And one of the things I’m going to do, and this is only going to make it tougher for me, and I’ve never said this before, but one of the things I’m going to do if I win — and I hope I do and we’re certainly leading — is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when The New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected. You see, with me, they’re not protected because I’m not like other people but I’m not taking money. I’m not taking their money. So we’re going to open up those libel laws folks and we’re going to have people sue you like you never got sued before. We have many things to do. We have many, many things to do.

Readers of this blog know how very bitterly and often I’ve criticized the MSM, including the two outlets Trump mentioned. But this is very dangerous stuff from Trump—although many of his supporters probably will love it because they hate the MSM and they appear to believe that ends justify means. Or perhaps they’ll justify it in the usual way, that Trump will somehow magically do stuff about immigration that no one else will do and that he’ll fix it and that makes everything else he says okay and we must ignore his embrace of tyranny.

Well, I submit that there are other candidates who will do virtually the same stuff about immigration, or so close to it that their policies will stop the bleeding, and they’ll do it without destroying (or even wanting to destroy) the republic and its liberties in order to accomplish it.

This statement of Trump’s is many things, but one of them is a window into his mind. It’s not a pretty sight, and in fact it’s a dangerous place.

I wonder, also, how one “opens up” laws. I’d be awfully curious to hear Trump explain (extemporaneously, without consulting others)—other than to say he’ll do it, and it will be great.

I would like to know whether Trump knows what our current liberal laws are based on, and how they might be changed.

And I’d like him to tell us what those “many things” are that he’s planning to do if elected, and that he’s “never said before.” I bet they’re really huge, and really great.

[NOTE: Ace has an excellent piece on this, and more. Ace has until now, as he writes in the post, “weakly” supported Trump. But at this point he’s turning in his Trump card because he is convinced that Trump knows nothing and cares less, and that everything out of Trump’s mouth is pandering to what he thinks conservatives like so that they’ll nominate him right before he then turns sharly leftward. Read it.]

[NOTE II: On this Powerline thread, I found some fascinating and telling quotes from Trump supporters about this issue. Here’s one:

Mr. Trump has a good idea. Let the people decide these libel issues, insteads of these smug justices.

Another:

[Powerline] drama queens. We all have been disappointed by the media’s lack of fairness! You are over thinking what he is saying… He is raising an issue and creating attention. LOL!

And this

It doesn’t matter, [Powerline] Boys……..it doesn’t matter.

Let me clue you in to what matters (for the millionth time).

A) Cutting immigration.
B) Re-negotiating trade deals to re-kindle US manufacturing and to de-tangling us out of TPP Globalist deals.

And there’s this “free speech is only for those I agree with” guy:

I must say I agree with Trump. There must be a people’s remedy for willful misrepresenting, omitting (relevant) facts or including irrelevant ones. or editorially omitting stories altogether. Every liberal news outlet these days is presenting suppostion, speculation, and wishful-thinking editorial bias to every story they print. They CANNOT be objective, even though they are losing millions annually. They do NOT pursue truth. Profit is NOT their motive. Liberal political power is. This has been going on unchallenged for 3-4 generations. It has caused millions of Americans to be misled. It it one of the PRIMARY reasons this nation is in the sorry shape it’s in.

Scott, are you saying WE THE PEOPLE must just sit back and taccept this? I could NOT disagree more. I do not believe the first amendment enables vicious slander or some other deliberate malevolent unlawful behavior. That is NOT free speech. It is slander and defamation. A few lawsuits against these miscreants would have a palliative affect on this.

Trump is right. You are wrong.

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.]

[NOTE III: I’d also like every single conservative (excuse me: “conservative”) who has endorsed Trump to explain how he or she can square away that endorsement with these statements of Trump’s.]

Dueling Concerto Baroccos

The New Neo Posted on by

In 1941 George Balanchine choreographed the ballet “Concerto Barocco” to Bach’s Concerto in D minor for Two Violins. When I write “choreographed to,” I really mean it, because the dance has virtually no plot except to express the music, with the two soloist dancers acting as the two violins, and the chorus as background. It succeeds on every term—as a visualization of the music, as a puzzle solved in patterns, and as a showcase for the dancers. It must have been revolutionary when it was first performed.

This is a cast from the Balanchine mother ship, New York City Ballet, at a time when Balanchine was still alive and personally supervising just about everything (my estimate for this is mid-1970s, but I’m not certain). Unfortunately, the video has some “creative” camera angles that shift and change too much; I’d much have preferred simple and steady. But it’s still lovely:

However, I’d like you to look at a much older video. Although the ballet was choreographed in 1941, it didn’t receive its NYCB premiere until 1948, and this may have been the original cast. If not the original, it’s not long after; perhaps the early 50s.

For me, this version is incomparable. There is a gentleness and ease, particularly in the second dancer who enters, Tanaquil Le Clerc. She had an usual combination of strength and refinement, a precision of movement that seemed both intentional and completely relaxed at the same time, which makes everyone else seem to be straining in comparison. Note, also, how the two soloists move on the music in a way that synchronizes them far better than in the previous video, where they seem slightly disconnected from each other. These two have a sixth sense that unites them:

It’s grainy, and it’s black-and-white. But there is a delicacy and wit and emphasis that is quite different from today, and to me superior.

[NOTE: Tanaquil Le Clerq developed polio in 1956 while in her mid-twenties, and never walked again. She was married to Balanchine at the time, and he divorced her in 1969.]