How far does Christian duty go?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of an earlier post that seems to me to be worth repeating, particularly in light of the Pope’s remarks the other day about building walls and Christians.]

A great many Christians seem to be arguing that we Westerners have a duty to accept all the refugees coming from war-torn countries such as Syria, or those in economic distress such as illegal immigrants from Mexico, whether the “we” be individuals here or in Europe. I’ve read many such arguments on blogs in posts and comments, and have seen them offered by talking heads on TV.

To me as a non-Christian, it is a puzzling argument. To me it seems that the prescription to give to charity, to help the needy, never requires that one help all the needy to the point of beggaring yourself. Nor does it require putting yourself in personal jeopardy. In other words, although Christianity has long admired the saintliness of martyrdom, it does not require it of individuals and certainly not of societies.

There is a saying, “charity begins at home” that has these origins:

The notion that a man’s family should be his foremost concern is expressed in 1 Timothy 5:8, King James Bible, 1611:

But if any prouide not for his owne, & specially for those of his owne house, hee hath denied the faith, and is worse then an infidel.

John Wyclif had expressed the same idea as early as 1382, in Of Prelates, reprinted in English Works, 1880:

Charite schuld bigyne at hem-self.

So it seems clear that helping everyone in need is not possible in the real world. Nor does helping people require that you take them into your own home, either in small numbers or large.

Another principle to remember is that generally any behavior that is rewarded will increase in frequency. So, issue an open invitation to your house saying that all who come will be fed and clothed there and given money, and see what happens if you broadcast it throughout the entire world.

In the case of immigrants from a country such as Syria, the current refugee crisis is a golden opportunity for a significant number of terrorists to come in among them. The more immigrants arrive the more difficult it will be to properly vet them (if indeed there’s any effort at all to do so). In addition, a great number of bona fide refugees fleeing a harsh situation in Syria are nevertheless sworn to the cultural and religious overthrow of the West through the demographic change of which they will be part.

So, how far does your obligation to help go, and to accept the stranger into your home? Does it extend to those who want to take over your dwelling?

I am not completely familiar with the tenets of Christianity, to be sure. But I can’t imagine that it requires such self-destruction in the name of good. To me, it seems that limits are necessary, and the proper topic for debate is the question of where to draw those limits.

Could Trump’s 9/11 story be false?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Please read the ADDENDUM at the end of this post for some additional information I’ve seen that tends to support Trump’s account rather than the 2004 Time article. The information has to do with the timing of a video interview of Trump, and also a contradictory account in another print interview.]

Donald Trump has told a number of stories about what he saw on 9/11, and you may recall that some of these stories became controversial and people doubted their veracity (more about that later). But one basic constant has always been that on the morning of 9/11 he watched the burning towers from his midtown Manhattan apartment, and as far as I know that has never been disputed.

Let me say at the outset that I have no idea where Donald Trump was that morning, and he might be telling the absolute truth about having been in New York in his apartment. I certainly had always assumed he was telling the truth about that part of it, and would have had no reason to doubt him.

But this evening I happened across this article about skyscrapers that appeared in Time magazine on December 20, 2004, long before Trump’s location on 9/11 had much relevance to anything except his own memories. I have no idea whether the following is true, but I’d certainly like to find out:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Adrian D. Smith, a well-known architect in the Chicago office of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, was in a meeting with Donald Trump. The hyperbolic New York City developer was in Chicago to go over the design of a proposed Trump residential tower in that city that he had decided should be ”” what else? ”” the tallest building in the world, around 2,000 ft. In the midst of their meeting, the two men got word of the first plane that hit the World Trade Center. “When the second plane hit, we all rushed to the television to see what was happening,” says Smith. “That was the end of the meeting.” And also the end of the 2,000-ft. tower. A few weeks later, Trump’s people came back with a revised proposal ”” at 900 ft. or so.

The author of the article, Richard Lacayo, is still at Time magazine, and architect Adrian D. Smith is still alive, as well.

Most people retain vivid memories of where they were on 9/11 and can tell the tale accurately. I am going to assume that, because the Time article was written a mere three years after 9/11, the facts in it are based on much fresher memories than today’s recollections would be. Furthermore, it is often said that memories of where a person was when learning of enormous and shocking crises like 9/11 don’t tend to fade or to change; they remain fairly constant. There actually has been research done on the question of the accuracy of 9/11 memories, and the findings were that the memory of where a person was when hearing about it was one of the most stable types of memory of the events of 9/11. When answers at one week later were compared to memories one year and then three years later, the consistency of people’s answers were 89% and 83%, respectively. I don’t know the researchers’ definition of “accuracy” in terms of how exactly similar a story had to be to be judged accurate. But a difference as enormous as being in one’s apartment in New York watching in real life, versus being in a Chicago office having a meeting with an architect and then watching on TV, would certainly qualify as an extremely wide disparity. One of these stories—either Trump’s or the one in Time—is true, but they cannot both be true.

NOTE: To recap the other controversies around Trump’s personal 9/11 narrative—his first suspect story was about watching “thousands and thousands” of Arabs in New Jersey celebrating on 9/11. Diligent fact-checking revealed that, although there indeed were some small celebrations reported there, nothing of that magnitude occurred (the largest seems to have been about 30 people), and nothing was shown on TV except for some large celebrations in Palestine. So the consensus was that perhaps Trump had conflated the two. Memory can do that.

The second Trump story about 9/11 that has been questioned was that he could see people jumping from the WTC the morning as he watched from his midtown apartment, which is four miles away. Is such keen eyesight even possible? Some experts doubt it.

The third suspect story is Trump’s more recent claim of having lost “hundreds” of friends in the 9/11 attack on the WTC. The Daily Beast reported at length on the problems with Trump’s claim (estimating it would have meant he’d been friends with close to one in ten of the 9/11 victims), and stated that as of the time they wrote the story (2/17), Trump had not answered requests to name even a single friend he lost on 9/11.

[ADDENDUM: After writing this post I found two interviews that Trump gave very shortly after 9/11. One appeared in print on September 18, 2001, and the other is labeled on YouTube as having been videotaped on September 13, 2001. Part of the video is in German, and I don’t see or hear any corroboration of the 9/13 date (or anything about the date at all), but I don’t speak German, so it’s possible there is one.

Neither the article nor the video sheds any light on the question of where Trump might have been on 9/11, although if he’d been in Chicago on 9/11 it probably wouldn’t have been easy for him to return to NY in time for that video—if in fact that interview was taped some time on 9/13. We know that the airports were closed for a while after 9/11. This article says flights resumed on 9/13, however, so it seems it could have been possible. It would certainly be helpful to know when private planes were first allowed to fly after 9/11, but I haven’t been able to locate that information so far. The subject matter of each interview was Trump’s opinion on rebuilding on the WTC site, from the viewpoint of a real estate developer.

Also, and even more importantly, an article written in 2002 by Charles Shaw that conflicts with the Time account has been brought to my attention. It says:

Adrian Smith recalls where he was on the morning of 9/11. In what can only be described as sickening irony, he was with representatives of Donald Trump, preparing to go live with a press conference to unveil his new design for Trump Chicago…

Time says that Trump himself was in Chicago, but Shaw says it was “representatives.” Again, someone got it wrong, but there’s no way to tell for certain who it was. But putting all this additional information together, (the video said to be taken on 9/13, and the conflicting article), I’m now very strongly leaning towards saying Trump is much more likely to be telling the truth about being in his apartment and that the Time article is more likely to have been mistaken. Probably it was either the architect who misremembered exactly who was there, when being interviewed three years later, or the article’s author had misunderstood him and thought he said Trump himself was there rather than just the representatives.]

Two new statements from the ever-evolving Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE: I had to also add a link to this, where Trump praises the Iraq war (hat tip: “sdferr”):

Republican primary front-runner Donald Trump claimed on the second day of Operation Iraqi Freedom that it appeared to be “a tremendous success from a military standpoint.”

Speaking to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on March 21, 2003, Trump predicted the war would continue to bolster Wall Street.

“Well, I think Wall Street’s waiting to see what happens, but even before the fact they’re obviously taking it a little bit for granted, and it looks like a tremendous success from a military standpoint, and I think this is really nothing compared to what you’re gonna see after the war is over,” Trump said, as first reported by BuzzFeed News…

Trump also speculated in the interview as to what kinds of weapons of mass destruction the Iraqi regime was hiding.

“The main thing is to get the war over with and just make it a tremendously successful campaign, and it’ll be very interesting to see what kind of weapons they uncover,” he said.

Wow.]

Every time I vow to get off the topic of Trump there is something new that needs highlighting.

So without a whole lot of discussion, I will just point out these two posts from Powerline:

(1) Trump likes the Obamacare mandate.

So I wonder: why then is Trump so down on Justice Roberts? All Roberts did was to say the mandate was perfectly all right if you call it a tax.

Mirengoff writes that the CNN interview in which Trump made this pro-mandate statement was generally incoherent, although that particular statement was clear. I wrote about that interview here, but in all the flurry I missed Trump’s moment of clarity—and approval—about the mandate.

Could someone please inform the people of South Carolina of all of this? Quickly?

(2)Trump is on record as saying in a 2002 interview that he favored attacking Iraq:

Donald Trump has made his alleged opposition to the war in Iraq a central theme of his presidential campaign. He claims that it differentiates him from his opponents and speaks to his sagacity when it comes to foreign and military policy.

Early on, we noted that there was no evidence Trump opposed the invasion before it occurred. He began to criticize the war only after it appeared to be going badly. That’s known as Monday morning quarterbacking.

More recently, we pointed to a book Trump wrote in 2000 where he spoke favorably about the possibility of an invasion. In that interview, however, Trump stopped short of saying we should invade.

Now, Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed has unearthed a 2002 statement by Trump in which he said the U.S. should invade Iraq.

Note again that the timing of Trump’s opposition to the war is a big part of his campaign; he talks about it a lot.

A significant amount of what Trump is saying now about his past statements and positions is made-up stuff. His contempt for the press and the public seems to encompass the idea that they won’t bother to fact-check him, or that they won’t care. Perhaps he’s correct about at least one of those, maybe both.

Another stabbing in Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

Once again there has been a fatal stabbing perpetrated by Palestinian teenagers who have been incited by propaganda (from the Palestinian Authority, and also spread through social media) to instigate these low-tech attacks.

Yesterday’s victim was 21-year-old Tuvia Yanai Weissman, pictured here with his wife and baby:

weisman

RIP.

This also seems important:

The Palestinian attackers were 14 years old. They were shot by a private citizen during the assault. One died and the other is an Israeli hospital where he will receive as complete medical treatment as the person he stabbed.

A great many of these attacks have been truncated by the timely action of private citizens carrying weapons.

“The person he stabbed” does not refer to Weissman; it refers to another victim who was wounded in the attack.

Death of a Salesman: “well-liked”

The New Neo Posted on by

Okay, I admit this is a bit odd. But when Donald Trump (yeah, Trump; but don’t worry, this post is not really about Trump) disses Cruz and others about their likability, for me it conjures up the way Willy Loman talks in the play “Death of a Salesman.” Here’s a typical quote from Trump on the subject:

…[Cruz is] a nasty guy, nobody likes him. Nobody in Congress likes him. Nobody likes him anywhere once they get to know him. He’s a very ”“ He’s got a edge that’s not good. You can’t make deals with people like that.

You might think it’s ridiculous of me to think of Willy Loman in connection with Trump. You might even say that Loman is Trump’s opposite. After all, Trump is fabulously successful, and Loman was a failure in business who had once managed to eke out a living but by the time the play starts was about to be put on the shelf, a has-been. So why was I thinking about the character?

Well, I’ve seen that play many, many times, on the stage and in the movies. My favorite version is the 1951 Frederic March black-and-white movie, the first one I ever saw, on TV when I was a child. It made a deep deep impression on me. I might not have understood every word and every nuance, but I got it, all right (and yes, as an adult I know that Miller was a leftist and that the play fits in with leftism; but I saw it, and still see it, in very human and individual terms). I was transfixed by the pathos of March’s performance, the warm glow of his memories—for example, of playing ball with his sons when they were still teenagers, when all was new and promising for him and for them, before disillusionment and heartache and betrayal had set in.

Loman’s character made an indelible mark on me. His emphasis on success, on being liked—well-liked (the words are mentioned over and over in the script) was a hallmark of what he felt a person should strive for. And yet the trajectory of the play was cruelly ironic. Trump’s words about Cruz made me think of the way Willy spoke of his rivals.

This YouTube video is of the entire movie. If you’re interested in a somber but brilliant rendition of the play (far better, in my opinion, than the Dustin Hoffman version, which I cannot stand), please watch the whole thing. Here’s the scene, one of many flashbacks or fantasy sequences where the older and despondent Loman, whose relationship with his sons has degenerated over time, steps away from the present into memories of a far more pleasant past. Willy’s statement about being “well-liked” takes place at around 17.30 (he’s speaking of a successful neighbor, “Uncle Charley,” who’s achieved a lot but isn’t liked). But I’ve started the clip at the beginning of the scene, late in the evening. It begins with Willy alone in the kitchen, speaking to his present-day grownup sons even though they aren’t there, and something sparks a journey memory (notice the change in the light as Willy steps into the past):

Then there’s this, which starts in the present when Willy is playing cards with the afore-mentioned neighbor Charley (then one who isn’t “well-liked”), and begins to remember an occasion when his mega-successful brother Ben (successful in the monetary, Trumpian sense, but without a “likable” Trumpian personality) came to visit and gave him some advice about success:

I am very anxious…

The New Neo Posted on by

…about tomorrow’s primary.

I’m assuming Trump will win. The question is: by how much, and in what order the others will come in, and what will their percentages be?

And even more importantly, will any of them drop out right afterward? I believe this is the key, and I also fear that for some or most of them (we’re talking Bush, Kasich, and Carson) their egos and desires will get in the way and drive them onward in a cause that is not only lost in terms of their being nominated, but destructive—unless a Trump nomination is something they want, which I tend to doubt. Of course, perhaps some of them have been promised the VP spot if they stay in, which would explain something about their motivation.

I have never been nervous during primaries before, much less this nervous. During elections, yes—as in 2012, when I was pessimistic about Romney’s chances, and feared Obama would be re-elected.

What was Trump actually saying about DACA—or was he saying anything about it?

The New Neo Posted on by

In the comments section of last night’s post there was a discussion about what Trump actually meant to say during his press conference when asked about Obama’s deferred action on illegal minors, otherwise known as DACA. There is a video at the link, but this was how Trump’s remarks began:

REPORTER: Um, there are over a hundred thousand young people known as DREAMers”¦

TRUMP: Yeah.

REPORTER: Who have the deferred action given to them by the Obama administration..

TRUMP: Sure. I think it’s great.

That was about it on the actual subject of DACA, because then Trump went on an extended riff about other people in this country—especially young black people—needing to be able to dream as well. When the reporter asked him again whether he would revoke Obama’s deferred action (although the only thing he’d said about it thus far was “it’s great”) Trump then replied “I’ll look into it” and took a new question.

When I wrote last night’s post, I assumed that most people would remember what “deferred action given to them by the Obama administration” refers to. But it occurs to me that it happened long enough ago that perhaps a lot of people can’t recall it.

Immigration and illegal immigration—and what to do about future immigration as well as the immigrants and illegal immigrants already here—is Trump’s signature policy, the stance on which he is attracting many of his supporters. The reporter’s question was about deferred action on DREAMers (more officially known as DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). This was one of the most controversial policies of Obama regarding immigration, and one that most Republicans objected to when it was announced in the summer of 2012:

President Obama announced on June 15, 2012, that the U.S. Dept. Homeland Security would not deport certain DREAM Act”“eligible undocumented youth. Under a directive from the secretary of DHS, these youth will be given temporary relief called “deferred action.”

Do you remember what a brouhaha that caused? You could even argue that it’s a form of amnesty (although not citizenship) for people here illegally. That was one objection to it. Another was how it was done: executive rather than Congressional action—that is, an executive grant of amnesty from deportation, and the granting of certain privileges, because Congress wouldn’t pass a statute granting these things.

Now we have Trump saying “It’s great!” What did he mean? Perhaps he didn’t understand what she was talking about. But let’s say that Trump did understand, and that he meant what he said. If so, that would (a) be enormous news and a huge reversal of his usual attitude towards immigration and amnesty; and (b) it would require an explanation of some sorts, at the very minimum—for example, telling us whether he thinks the whole thing was great, including the method by which it was done, and why he is departing from most of the GOP on this.

Expecting a candidate to be minimally conversant with something that was not a small story, or a little unimportant detail—on an issue that is his own signature issue—is not asking someone to be a detail man. It is asking someone to have the absolute minimum of knowledge about something he’s supposedly been studying and thinking about since June and even before June.

Here’s more about the things that Obama’s “deferred action” effected, things which Trump apparently either doesn’t know about, or doesn’t think he needs to talk about, or thinks are “great” (or some combination of those choices):

While the DREAM Act failed, the name stuck, and now the term DREAMers applies generally to illegal aliens under the age of 35 seeking full or partial legalization / amnesty and/or taxpayer subsidized tuition…

In 2012, President Obama unilaterally implemented a new program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates there are 1.2 million DREAMers to whom this action applies. Under DACA, illegal aliens are offered two years of amnesty (“deferred action” – meaning a stay of deportation), are given a social security number, and are allowed to apply for a work permit…

In August, 2012, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, stated:

“The president”s amnesty program is a magnet for fraud and abuse. While potentially millions of illegal immigrants will be permitted to compete with American workers for scarce jobs, there seems to be little if any mechanism in place for vetting fraudulent applications and documentation submitted by illegal immigrants.”

Isn’t competition for jobs between citizens and illegal immigrants one of Trump’s main themes, as well?

And finally—and in a way this might be most important—Obama’s issuance of DACA is one of the reasons for the influx of under-18 illegal immigrants to this country that picked up steam during the summer of 2014. I wrote about it in this post, citing this CS Monitor article:

At issue is Mr. Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which in 2012 allowed some undocumented immigrants who came to America as minors to defer deportation for two years. Last week, the administration announced guidelines for how these immigrants could defer deportation for a further two years.

DACA would not apply to anyone coming across the border today. Only undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as minors before June 15, 2007, are eligible. But to Republican critics, DACA created the opportunity for misinformation and confusion.

“Word has gotten out around the world about President Obama’s lax immigration enforcement policies and it has encouraged more individuals to come to the United States illegally,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R) of Virginia, a key broker in immigration reform efforts on Capitol Hill, in a statement last week”¦

…Obama called the situation [the increase in young illegal immigrants] a “humanitarian crisis” Monday. Poverty and violence are driving the migration, administration officials say, and activists working with migrants agree. But some also suggest that DACA could be a factor.

At the time, there was quite a bit of consensus on the right about DACA being part of the impetus for the groundswell of recent illegal immigration of minors and resultant anti-illegal-immigrant sentiment—a sentiment that later ended up fueling Trump’s bid for the presidency.

Although, come to think of it, maybe Trump thinks it’s “great” because without it he wouldn’t have had a chance at being nominated. And whatever benefits Trump is “great.”

However you interpret Trump’s remarks, this sort of press conference answer should strike fear into the hearts of his supporters. Of course, it doesn’t. Nor is it being especially publicized, as far as I know. That’s because the press wants Trump as the nominee for two reasons. The first is that, with their help, he can be destroyed in the general when this sort of thing, plus almost countless incidents from Trump’s past, are trotted out and exploited. The second is that he’s very very good for business—their business, that is.

Dream a little dream of DREAMers

The New Neo Posted on by

When in doubt, you can always run out the clock with some verbiage, and then promise to “look at it.” In the following clip I also could not help noticing the ever-increasing arrogant dismissiveness of Trump’s manner these days.

Note also that the subject matter about which he was actually queried is supposed to be in Trump’s wheelhouse: immigration. Has he not bothered to learn much about it?

And yes, I know, I know; his answer is a strategic and powerful appeal to the black vote, right? He really could answer the question perfectly if he so desired.

I apologize for the continuing Trump focus. But I’d love for that Trump video to go viral. I can DREAM too, can’t I?

[ADDENDUM: And the hits keep coming: Trump on his health care plan:

Here’s what I said. We’re going to have great plans. They’re going to be much less expensive and they’re going to be much better because the Obama plan is unaffordable and it’s a disaster. And by the way in ’17 it’s going to die unless the Republicans continue to fund money like ”” it’s not affordable by the country, not affordable by the people. But what I say is this, we’re going to have great plans. But there will be a group of people that is not doing well, that has no money. We cannot let them die in the streets…And we’ll work out either through Medicare which we’ll save or something. We will work out a plan where instead of having people dying in the streets. And I say to the Republicans all the time. And by the way I get standing ovations from Republicans, from Republican groups. I got one yesterday. I said we can’t let people die in the streets. We got to work out a deal with the hospital or with somebody in that community where if somebody is sick and really sick. And they don’t have housing and they don’t have …

SCARBOROUGH: So all Americans will get health care of some sort ””

TRUMP: We’re going to take care of them. We’re going to take care of them. We have to take care of them. Now, that’s not single payer. That’s not anything. That’s just human decency. And I’ll tell you what. Every single time I say that, I say to people in the audience ”” I say, “so what do you think?” They all stand up and give me a standing ovation, OK?

…what we’re going to have is we’re going to have private plans, we’re going to have maybe the health care savings plans which are very good. We’re going to get rid of the lines. You know what happens when you get rid of the lines? You have tremendous competition and the price goes way down.

I realize that Trump doesn’t drink, but then what is the explanation here for the incoherence? “And we’ll work out either through Medicare which we’ll save or something.” Is his tactic just to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks? Does Trump’s answer sound like a plan of any kind, other than repetition of a bunch of extremely general options? And notice the continual reminding us of his crowd approval, “And by the way I get standing ovations from Republicans, from Republican groups. I got one yesterday”; “Every single time I say that, I say to people in the audience ”” I say, ‘so what do you think?’ They all stand up and give me a standing ovation, OK?”

If that wasn’t enough, you can take a look at this, a stroll down memory lane.]

On being a blogger these days: truth, Trump, and a whole lot of other things

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m what you might call a mid-level blogger. I’ve been doing this for eleven years, and I’ve reached a certain level of readership that’s more than I ever thought it would be when I began but less than I later came to hope it would become in the early heady days of blogopsheric growth.

Sometimes I write for other, larger venues. In the past, that’s been Pajamas Media and the online Weekly Standard, as well as an occasional American Thinker piece. For the past two years or so, I’ve also written regularly at Legal Insurrection, a blog with significantly more traffic than mine.

And yet, and yet, it feels like a drop in the bucket compared to what I think needs to be said.

We all have our natures and our styles and our approaches. I’m not a sensationalist or a rabble-rouser. Those would not be my strength, and I don’t even think I could do either well if I tried. I leave that to others. No, what I like to do is think and delve into things and then write about them. For me, a large part of what drives me is the quest and the learning. Quite often I find something different than what I thought I would, and those surprises are often the best.

I suppose that makes me different from people who have a message they want to impart and everything that doesn’t conform with that message is shut out. Sometimes I’ve spent hours researching something and found that I was wrong in my original assumption, and then I abandon the post as unworkable. Or sometimes I write it with the new information. Sometimes the information I find is even more in accord with what I already thought, and then I write about that. But I believe that the willingness to let the research be my guide is part of the reason I ended up changing my political identity once confronted with both new information and new ways (to me, anyway) of looking at the worlds of government, policy, and history.

That doesn’t mean I am bias-free. I’m a human being, so naturally I have biases. But I try to be as bias-free as I can when doing this work, and let the facts and logic and my own observations and reasoning lead me to my own conclusions, rather than to parrot anyone else.

Regular readers of my blog have almost undoubtedly noticed that Trump’s candidacy has slowly—and with increasing force—been something I do not support and cannot support. This is not a prejudice I began with, because (as I’ve written before) I really didn’t have strong feelings about him at the start. It has grown, however, the more I have learned of his history, the more I hear from his own mouth, and the more I read from his followers and supporters (two different categories, by the way).

Lately I’ve noticed another phenomenon happening more often with me than it used to. Because a great many of the posts I write take a while to research and then compose, I’m often behind the other writers/pundits in terms of getting the piece out there. That’s been the case for a long time with me on the blog and even in the articles I submit to others, but that’s just the way it is because of the manner in which I write and the research I usually do (as well as the fact that occasionally I like to get away from this computer). But it’s a handicap in terms of getting the word out on what I have to say, as is the length of some of the things I write.

For example, in my post on what was really happening between Rubio and Christie in that debate where everyone thought Rubio had merely frozen and repeated himself—when I went back to the transcript, analyzed it, and found something rather different than what most (including me) had originally perceived—I thought I had something important to say. It certainly was something that surprised me when I discovered it, but it was also something that took a long time to get out there and took many words to express and then prove. By then the caravan had moved on, as it were, and in addition it’s not the sort of thing most people will read. It’s not exciting, it’s not sexy, it’s not short and punchy. So even if I’d written it right away, it might not have mattered at all.

But it’s frustrating nonetheless. I had even written some shorter posts on the subject earlier, when I was researching the other and everyone was talking about the subject of Christie/Rubio, but what I was saying just didn’t get much currency and was drowned out in the meme that was already winning the day, and that ended up prevailing, because it was based on people’s gut perceptions. That’s what often ends up mattering; I understand that. But my goal seems to be to counter a gut perception if that perception seems wrong—and yes, I realize that’s a difficult thing to do. Maybe even impossible.

So here we go again. This time, though, it’s not about a perception. This time, most people were actually correct in their original perception of what happened when Trump did his “Bush lied!” bit during last Saturday’s debate. It’s the revisionist “correction” theories of the Trump supporters that are wrong, and I can prove it, but that revision of the truth has gotten halfway around the world already. I have the piece nearly written, but every day I hear more people accept as a truth the idea that Trump’s move was a pre-planned strategic one to appeal to voters in the middle and on the left. In fact, recently it was Limbaugh saying it, and believe me, he’s got a bigger audience than I do (I bet you do believe me on that).

I will try to finish up on the longer piece on the subject, but for now I’ll do the bullet points:

(1) That Bush lied about WMDs (and should have been impeached for it, and is “evil”) is an old and apparently deeply-held belief belief of Trump’s, as I’ve written in numerous previous posts, with quotes and videos. Trump started saying such things in 2007, with seeming sincerity and vigor. We can assume he believes them because he was not running for any office then, much less in some primary and thinking about appealing to voters in a general election. “Bush lied” therefore appears to be one of his most strongly held beliefs, and if he believes it he also believes Bush is evil (which he also has explicitly stated in the past).

(2) Not only that, but this is not even the first time he has made the “9/11 happened during Bush’s reign” remark before in the 2016 campaign. This is not a sudden change or pivot; he said it in October.

(3) If you look at the transcript of Saturday’s debate, Trump did not even bring the topic up. It was John Dickerson who asked Trump to defend his 2008 Wolf Blitzer interview comment that Bush had lied about WMDs and should be impeached for it. Was Dickerson and the question a pre-arranged Trump plant? Don’t think so—although some of Trump’s admirers might ascribe that power to Trump, too.

(4) Also from the transcript, Trump at first dodged the question and said a bunch of other things instead. Check it out for yourself. If he was just waiting for an opportunity to say what he ultimately said about Bush, why did he dodge it at first, and why was his first response to the question to merely say that Bush had been mistaken? It’s more evidence that Trump had no previous intention to go Code Pink; at first he avoided it, when he had a golden opportunity afforded by Dickerson’s question. Or was this avoidance just another clever ploy of Trump’s to make us think he didn’t want to go there? How creative can you be to defend your “strategic move” theory?

(5) Dickerson pressed Trump again by asking him about his statement that Bush should be impeached: does he still believe it? Trump dodges that question again, and it was only then (in anger at being pressed about impeachment) that he said “Bush lied.” He never does answer whether he still favors impeachment, but to avoid having to answer on that content question, as usual he went to process and tried to create a distracting flurry “Bush lied!” (something Dickerson had already quoted him as having said in 2008). And create a distraction Trump did, as well as motivating his followers to explain away the whole thing by calling it a clever strategic move, which it obviously was not.

But that meme has now gotten halfway around the world, as these things often do.

I have not seen one other person writing about this in terms of the transcript and what it reveals, or even about Trump’s prior history of such statements. Perhaps someone has (I certainly hope someone has), but I sure haven’t seen it. Why am I the only one? Why are the others content to spin and make up whatever theories they want, untethered by reality and actual events? I think I know the answer: because it works.

As I said, I’m not an activist or a spinner. I don’t know how to do other than what I do, or be other than what I am. I leave the spinning to others. I try to tell the truth as I see it.


In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII:

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final end of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last – far off – at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

Fortunately, very fortunately, we have much more than a cry. We have thought, logic, learning—and some activists, too, who will do the shouting.

The mystery bracelet

The New Neo Posted on by

This bracelet fragment is surpassingly strange, although it may not be clear why on first viewing:

bracelet2

Here’s a reconstruction of what it probably looked like when worn:

bracelet

Here’s the explanation:

It is intricately made with polished green stone and is thought to have adorned a very important woman or child on only special occasions. Yet this is no modern-day fashion accessory and is instead believed to be the oldest stone bracelet in the world, dating to as long ago as 40,000 years.

Unearthed in the Altai region of Siberia in 2008, after detailed analysis Russian experts now accept its remarkable age as correct…

The bracelet was found inside the famous Denisova Cave, in the Altai Mountains, which is renowned for its palaeontological finds dating back to the Denisovans, who were known as homo altaiensis, an extinct species of humans genetically distinct from Neanderthals and modern humans.

Made of chlorite, the bracelet was found in the same layer as the remains of some of the prehistoric people and is thought to belong to them.

What made the discovery especially striking was that the manufacturing technology is more common to a much later period, such as the Neolithic era. Indeed, it is not clear yet how the Denisovans could have made the bracelet with such skill…

The ancient master was skilled in techniques previously considered not characteristic for the Palaeolithic era, such as drilling with an implement, boring tool type rasp, grinding and polishing with a leather and skins of varying degrees of tanning.

Chlorite was not found in the vicinity of the cave and is thought to have come from a distance of at least 200km, showing how valued the material was at the time.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

In all the tumult, I forgot about this probable lie of Trump’s

The New Neo Posted on by

I heard Trump say during the debate that he had lost “hundreds of friends” on 9/11, and I immediately thought, “Really? That’s an awful lot of friends. I wonder if anyone’s ever challenged him on that.” And then I promptly forgot about it, since so much else was happening.

Well, The Daily Beast didn’t forget, and so they challenged him, and quelle surprise:

Two days after Donald Trump claimed that he “lost hundreds of friends” at the World Trade Center as a result of the 9/11 attack, his campaign continued to ignore a Daily Beast request that he name even one.

With silence comes the possibility that Trump told the most reprehensible lie of the campaign, just a few breaths from when he called both Sen. Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush liars.

By his math, Trump is trying to tell us that at least one in 10 of the 2,983 who died on 9/11 were his friends.

“If he has hundreds of friends, he should be able to tell us about them,” said a Port Authority police officer who never talks about how many comrades he lost. “If he can tell us about the hundreds of friends he lost, who they were, what kind of person they were, I might have some respect for him.”

So far he hasn’t been been able to tell the names of ten—or of one.

The cop also wonders why nobody seems to recall seeing Trump at the seemingly endless funerals that followed the attack…

…Trump was also on record saying that none of his properties were damaged in the attack.

But, as the New York Daily News has reported, Trump accepted a $150,000 federal grant that was part of a program meant to assist small businesses affected by 9/11.

That becomes all the more disgraceful if the news site The Smoking Gun is right in suggesting that in the four years after the attack, Trump did not make a single contribution to assist the victims of 9/11, hundreds of friends or no.

The Smoking Gun reports that the records of the Donald J. Trump Foundation show a single donation in 2006 of $1,000 to a “detox” Scientology program of uncertain value for first responders.

Trump did pledge $10,000 to the Twin Tower fund while calling into The Howard Stern Show, but an online search produces no record of him actually making it. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks has told the Daily Mail that Trump “has donated close to half a million dollars to organizations as a result of the 9/11 tragedy including the American Red Cross and the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Fund.”

Hicks said this was “in addition to a total of $102 million donated to hundreds of charitable foundations over a relatively short period of time, many of which helped people affected by 9/11.”

That $102 million may include land Trump donated to New York state after he abandoned plans to build a golf course. Trump enjoyed a considerable tax deduction…

Meanwhile, Trump offered to the press his opinions about the kind of memorial that should be built at Ground Zero, but seems to have contributed not a dime to building it.

He kicked in not even the price of admission to the 9/11 museum.

He does not appear to have attended any of the anniversary observances or to have participated in the reading of names…

If he has been to see the names inscribed at the memorial pools, he has been uncharacteristically inconspicuous.

Hey, if Trump can come up with these “hundreds,” I’ll take what I’m about to say back. But I highly doubt it will happen.

Con man. Liar. Exploiter of a terrorist attack. A man so secure in his sense that he is immune to exposure of his lies or consequences from lying that he will lie shamelessly and obviously when millions are watching and the spotlight is directly on him. Why anyone would still trust a single statement or promise he has made is utterly beyond me, except to say that a mind is a difficult thing to change.