The 34th Democrat joins the rest on the Iran deal

The New Neo Posted on by

It was a foregone conclusion that the Democrats would amass at least 34 votes to block an override of Obama’s prospective veto of a bill that would disapprove the Iran deal and its lifting of sanctions by executive action. It was so much of a foregone conclusion that I’ve already analyzed it, here.

But still, the announcement brings with it a heavy weight.

As far as I can tell, the Senate could still vote on the deal as though it were a treaty and roundly fail to give its “advise and consent” to it. Unfortunately, that would have the force of big fat zero. And yet I think it should be done; I am unaware of any drawback to such a gesture.

But let’s not fool ourselves that would be more than a gesture. A president determined to go this far, and a Senate that does not have a 2/3 to either override his veto or convict him after an impeachment, can do pretty much whatever he wants. And even had the Republicans the will, there’s nothing they could do about it other than shut down the government.

That’s reality as I see it. It’s not a picture I like, but I try not to shy away from the truth. The truth, as I see it, is that even the nuclear option would not help here. The only thing it would do is make sure that the Democrats couldn’t get to 40 votes to block a vote on the merits. Then the bill would be vetoed by Obama anyway, and that would be that. Is it worth activating the nuclear option for that? I wrote here that I think so. Even though it’s just another gesture, it would at least show a certain toughness that the Republican leadership in Congress doesn’t seem to be able to muster.

Why are the Democrats so powerful despite their lack of numbers? It’s really quite simple: they can’t pass legislation they want without the numbers, but they can block it, and their blockage is successful only because they have the president on their side. Without the president’s veto, the nuclear option would “work” in the sense that it would get bills past the magical 40 number, and there would be no need to worry about overriding a veto.

Now we will get the usual crowing from the left, and outrage from the right. The full effects of the deal won’t show up for a while, probably years, although Iran will immediately grow stronger.

It will be very interesting to see whether the Senate now votes on the Iran deal as a treaty. I wish they would; I doubt they will. It will also be very interesting to see whether the Democrats in the Senate will get to 40 votes to block a vote on the deal, and how the Republicans will react to that—whether they will invoke the nuclear option to vote on it anyway. I tend to doubt it.

By the way, don’t mistake my usual even tone for a lack of outrage or bitterness.

CNN may be changing its rules for the debate…

The New Neo Posted on by

…in a way that would let Carly Fiorina participate in the first-tier debate.

That’s unofficial and may just be a rumor. But, if it does happen and she replaces Chris Christie, don’t expect him to take it lying down. My best guess is that they’ll let him stay in, and have 11 instead of 10. The more the merrier, right?

If they do let Fiorina participate, it will be edifying to see her up against the more major players. Many people theorized that she shone in the first debate in part because the contrast between her and the people on the stage with her was so great. Interest will certainly be exceptionally high for the second, and all eyes on her if she is allowed in.

[Hat tip: commenter “KL Smith.”]

UPDATE 5:51 PM: This announcement indicates the rule change is official. It seems to still be limited to 10 candidates, though, which would mean that Christie gets the boot.

Trump’s favorable/unfavorable shift

The New Neo Posted on by

Chris Cillizza writes in the WaPo about the unprecedented shift in Donald Trump’s favorable/unfavorable polling in Iowa, from 27/63 back in May to 61/35 now. Did I say “shift”? More like “reversal”:

Numbers just don’t reverse themselves like that in the space of a few months (or ever). Especially when the politician in question is totally known by the electorate. Once you are both totally known and broadly disliked ”” as Trump was in May both in Iowa and everywhere else ”” you are doomed. One hundred times out of one hundred.

That’s why I was SO certain of Trump’s inability to matter at all in the 2016 race when he, somewhat stunningly, decided to enter it 70-odd days ago. In the almost 20 years ”” gulp ”” I have spent following politics closer than close, I’ve never seen anything like the total reversal in how Trump is perceived by Republican voters. It is, quite literally, unprecedented.

Cillizza seems dumbfounded by it. But Ann Althouse has a theory:

I suspect the change is that people have become accustomed to the idea that Trump hasn’t toppled, that the obvious ways of attacking him have failed, so he seems to be a credible candidate. In that sense, the media’s attacks have helped Trump, because he got the opportunity to very conspicuously show how he can stand his ground.

I think she’s correct and that his ability to withstand the onslaught of attacks has caused admiration. But I have an additional theory. I submit that, although Cillizza points out that prior to his candidacy Trump was “totally known and broadly disliked,” he was not known in his role as politician; certainly he wasn’t known that way back in May. Yes, he’d had a few desultory forays into politics before (2011), but who even knew that or paid attention at the time? I certainly didn’t.

When Trump first officially entered the 2016 race, his speech drew fire for his contention that many illegals were criminals (particularly the “rapists” remark), and he was widely criticized in the press and elsewhere because it seemed like such a stupidly incendiary thing to say. They thought it would finish him. But then it turns out that the facts seemed to back him up regarding criminality, and the Kate Steinle murder was a terrible and graphic example to which people could relate.

Trump got to say “See! Told you so!,” and this caused people to wonder whether he was really so off-the-graph after all.

As Trump went on, people became more familiar with him as a candidate. That’s a different thing from being familiar with a person’s business record or his reality-TV performances. As a politician—at least, this time round—he has had an almost uncanny knack for saying things, being ridiculed for them, and then having them come true. He also has demonstrated a remarkable ability to speak off-the-cuff, without notes, in a way that strikes many people as honest, sincere—and above all, likable.

I wrote about Trump’s unexpectedly populist touch here. For a man who was actually born with a silver spoon in his mouth, it’s surprising. But some of the very things the MSM and the “establishment” GOP dislikes him for—his anti-PC bluntness, his bluster, his seemingly stream-of-consciousness speeches—are exactly what give him that common touch for many listeners.

There’s something else going on, too, with his poll numbers. The public has not only gotten used to Trump as candidate, and (as Althouse writes) gotten used to seeing that he can stand his ground, but people have also become accustomed to the ideas he expresses, thoughts that initially may have seemed far out of the mainstream because they hadn’t been commonly voiced by politicians. An end to birthright citizenship for the children of illegals is the sort of issue only talked about previously by Senator Vitter (and relatively obscure bloggers like me), and how many people had ever heard of it before Trump, or knew the arguments pro or con? Trump dragged the idea out into the sunlight to be discussed and dissected, and many people who heard him (and had found it a radical notion at first) decided, once they became familiar with the discussion, that the idea had some merit. Over time, the shock value of Trump’s positions generally has been diluted.

All those things contribute to the Iowans’ change of heart. But is Iowa typical? This article, and the polls it cites, maintains that, overall, Trump’s negatives are still quite high compared to his positives, and he gets a lot of “would never vote for” responses.

One thing is certain: Trump is stumping a lot of people as he continues on the stump.

Mark Moogalian—one of the other train heroes—tells his story

The New Neo Posted on by

Ace translates a fascinating interview Mark Moogalian gave to Le Figaro.

In case you don’t recall who Moogalian is, he’s the Virginia-born professor married to a Frenchwoman and living in France, who was one of the first people to engage the terrorist (an anonymous Frenchman was the other) on the train. Moogalian was sitting towards the front of his train car when he saw the Frenchman in the rear of the adjoining train car grappling with the terrorist, and rushed forward, grabbing the terrorist’s AK47.

Here’s an excerpt, but do yourself a favor and read the whole thing:

Q: You had at the same time the reflex to tell your wife to get out of there?

A: I turned towards Isabelle [his wife] who, herself, was still seated, and I told her “get out of here.” This must be serious. I wanted more than anything to protect her. She saw in my face that I wasn’t joking. And then, I don’t know how, I managed to pull the Kalcahinikov from the man.

Q: Did you exchange words with him?

A: No, not at that moment…I left car 12 getting away from him crying out “I’ve got the gun!” (j’ai la arme). I was satisfied… but not very experienced because I didn’t think that he might have a a pistol in addition. I took four or five steps and I felt a pain that almost knocked me unconscious, a shock that knocked me forward. I crumpled to the floor and I dropped the Kalachnikov.

Q: Were you able to keep on watching what was happening?

A: A little. I was between two rows of seats, another passenger against me. I felt my shirt become drenched with my blood. I tried to look and I saw Isabelle, a few rows away from me. We stared at each other, eyes locked. I told her, “I’m hit. I’m done for.” I saw nothing but her eyes. In the past, since as along as I remember, I had always thought: “When my time to die comes, I want to do it well, without any fear.” Well, here it was. I saw that Isabelle was about to burst into tears.

The Ace link also displays a video made by two jujitsu experts, explaining some of the details of the combat on the train as best they could piece together. The video was made fairly soon after the incident, so they get a number of things wrong (they thought Sadler was also in the armed forces, for example, and they knew little about Moogalian and his story). But the video is still of great interest, especially the second half of it, which contains their analysis of the mentality of the sort of people who race into defending the group at great risk to their own lives, and the mentality of a terrorist thus surprised by a group of defenders.

Camp of the Saints author interview

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “Beverly.”]

Here’s a 1994 interview with Camp of the Saints author Jean Raspail. He’s the Frenchman who wrote an extraordinarily prescient and disturbing work of fiction, published in 1973, about a future takeover of the West through immigration from the Third World.

Raspail emerges from the interview as somewhat of an eccentric, but he can certainly give himself a huge pat on the back for foresight on this particular topic:

Our first question is the obvious one Do you think that the vision portrayed in your book is coming true? The answer Haven’t you seen the preface to the third (1985) French edition of the book? No, indeed we hadn’t.

We should read it. This preface explains that the book is symbolic, a parable. History is speeded up to happen over the course of days rather than a couple of decades or a generation. In real life things don’t come about so quickly, but the principle remains the same. The Third World invasion of the West is unavoidable. If we don’t see it, our children will.

The interview was given about twenty years ago. I wondered when I read this whether Raspail is still alive. He is, and would be about 90 now.

Let me repeat that I haven’t read his book and have no idea how I would review it. One thing I can safely say, however, it that its theme certainly seems relevant these days. The details are different, but the basic quandary that he laid out is the same.

Europe reacts…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to its own immigration (“migrant”) crisis. It seems that some of the countries with more lenient policies are trying to pressure the others into being more like them:

Interior ministers from all 28 EU states will meet in Luxembourg on September 14 to address the current crisis. In the mean time, the debate will continue. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on other EU nations to do more to assist those seeking refuge; meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius lashed out at eastern states for taking harsher measures against the flow of migrants.

…Both Merkel and French President Francois Hollande are expected to propose a series of new universal regulations, including the construction of new processing centers and the institution of quotas for all EU member states. They have, however, floated the idea of creating a list of “safe countries”; those seeking asylum from those countries would be automatically turned away.

Germany has threatened to reintroduce controls at their own borders if other countries don’t fall in line with plans along the lines of those floated by Merkel and Hollande.

I wonder how many members of the EU might be regretting the day they joined it by now. Relinquishing aspects of your sovereignty might not be such a good idea after all.

What was that novel again? Called The Camp of the Saints, it was a 1973 book by Frenchman Jean Raspail in which:

…Third World mass immigration to France and the West leads to the destruction of Western civilization. Almost forty years after publication the book returned to the bestseller list in 2011.

I have never read it; never even had heard of it until a few months ago, and have no idea whether it’s any good or not. The immigrants in the book are from India rather than the Middle East or Africa, but the plot sounds interesting, to say the least:

The Camp of the Saints is a novel about population migration and its consequences. In Calcutta, India, the Belgian government announces a policy in which Indian babies will be adopted and raised in Belgium. The policy is reversed after the Belgian consulate is inundated with poverty-stricken parents eager to give up their infant children.

An Indian “wise man” then rallies the masses to make a mass exodus to live in Europe. Most of the story centers on the French Riviera, where almost no one remains except for the military and a few civilians, including a retired professor who has been watching the huge fleet of run-down freighters approaching the French coast.

The story alternates between the French reaction to the mass immigration and the attitude of the immigrants. They have no desire to assimilate into French culture but want the goods that are in short supply in their native India. Although the novel focuses on France, the rest of the West shares its fate.

Near the end of the story the mayor of New York City is made to share Gracie Mansion with three families from Harlem, the Queen of the United Kingdom must agree to have her son marry a Pakistani woman, and only one drunken Soviet soldier stands in the way of thousands of Chinese people as they swarm into Siberia.

Well, I think our leaders—such as the mayor of New York—would always be able to erect a personal firewall. But the entire scenario, and the photo at Legal Insurrection, is too close for comfort. The moral question—how far need we go to alleviate the world’s suffering, and how best to protect ourselves while we try to be at least somewhat humanitarian—is a crucial one, and getting more crucial every day.

[NOTE: It also reminds me of an Indian film I saw in the early 70s, made by Satyajit Ray and called “Distant Thunder.” The film didn’t deal with international migration, but it explored the same issues of compassion versus protection. Interestingly enough, it was made in the same year that The Camp of the Saints was first published, 1973. The Wiki description of the film goes like this:

The film is set in a village in the Indian province of Bengal during World War II, and examines the effect of the Great Famine of 1943 on the villages of Bengal through the eyes of a young Brahmin doctor-teacher, Gangacharan, and his wife, Anaga. Ray shows the human scale of a cataclysmic event that killed more than 3 million people. The film unfolds at a leisurely pace that reflects the rhythms of village life, but gradually shows the breakdown of traditional village norms under the pressure of hunger and starvation.

Well, yes—but that’s not what I remember most, which is the last scene or a scene that occurred close to the ending. I’m doing this from a memory that’s over 40 years old, about a film I only saw once, so I could be wrong. But what I recall is that the lead character, an aristocratic and originally arrogant guy, who has watched with his wife in growing horror as things degenerate all around him, decides in the end to take starving villagers into his own home. Some of the reviews mention an amazing and harrowing last scene but none describe it, so I’m not sure if it’s the one I recall or something else. From looking at the reviews now, I can see that the film almost certainly comes down on the side of compassion (which is what I remember as well), but that it’s not presented as being quite that simple. I’d like to view it again, and have had it sitting in my Netflix queue literally for years, but it seems to be unavailable anywhere.]

Whatever happened to Scott Walker?

The New Neo Posted on by

He was my early favorite, a fighter who had been remarkably successful in a blue state. Yes, he’s a low-key Midwestern-nice kind of guy, but I thought he’d pick up the pace when he started campaigning for president.

But Scott Walker really hasn’t come across well so far. The term “lackluster” keeps appearing to describe his performance in the first debate. He seems to have a lower energy level than most of the others, and that’s part of it.

But Ben Carson is very laid-back, and he did quite well in the first debate. Walker didn’t just seem low-key; he seemed neither articulate nor sharp about what he was saying, too much of which sounded more like slogans and prepared sound bites than especially thoughtful commentary.

Walker’s youth could be an asset, but he almost looks too young, even though he’s not; he’s 47, and one of the most experienced candidates on the stage. But somehow his experience hasn’t yet translated into force and command. The other word besides “lackluster” that keeps coming to mind is “callow,” which means “immature and inexperienced” and is exactly the opposite of what Walker actually is. But it’s how he’s come across so far, unfortunately for him.

He’s getting lost in the shuffle. In addition, he’s flubbed some policy points he tried to make. One was his seemingly back and forth stance on illegal immigration and especially birthright citizenship, and the other was his muddled statement about abortion to save the life of the mother (see this). Still another was his recent declaration that seemed to be making the extreme statement of advocating a wall on the Canadian border but may have merely been a poorly-worded attempt to say we need to talk about tightening security there as well as Mexico.

Unlike Fiorina, Walker benefits from CNN’s rules for the next debate, which weight older polls more heavily than I think they should be. At some point, however, he going to have to become more clear in his message and more forceful in his delivery, or he’ll find himself out of the running. A campaign is a marathon, and appealing on a national level is different than on a state level.

Obama says “there’s not a smidgen of evidence” that’s he’s anti-Semitic

The New Neo Posted on by

Whenever Obama uses the word “smidgen”—watch out, methinks he doth protest too much.

Remember when?:

In his remarks denying anti-Semitism, Obama was apparently responding to Ben Carson, who said this:

Some, including GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, have gone as far to suggest the deal makes Obama an anti-Semite.

“I think anything is anti-Semitic if it’s against the survival of a state that is surrounded by enemies and by people who want to destroy them,” Carson said this month on Fox News Sunday. “And to sort of ignore that and to act like everything is normal there and that these people are paranoid is anti-Semitic.”

As for my take on it, Obama has made it clear that he admires some Jews—leftist Jews—and he admired the state of Israel and its leaders as long as it was run by the left. I wrote about that a few months ago here:

Lastly, we have:

“Throughout his tenure, Oren believed he was uniquely well-equipped to explain Israel to Americans and America to the Israelis. But how to explain a president who recently said that the Israel he admires is the Israel of kibbutzim and Golda Meir ”” a ludicrously rosy and unrealistic image of the Jewish state on par with wanting to look like Disneyland’s Main Street USA?”

But if Obama’s statement is true, it’s really no mystery at all. Obama is first and foremost a man of the left. The left used to love Israel during its early years, when Israel was a leftist country founded by leftists, and the kibbutzim were part of that movement. Meir herself was a leftist through and through…

For Obama, I doubt he’s an anti-Semite in the same vein as Jimmy Carter, who really does seem to have some deeper hatred for Jews. Maybe there’s no love lost, but Obama has no particular problem with Jews as long as they are on the leftist reservation and revere him sufficiently, and are willing to sacrifice themselves and Israel for the leftist cause.

Denali’s not just a river in Egypt

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a mountain in Alaska that’s been known as McKinley for about 100 years.

Obama has decided to rename it with its native American name. This has made Alaskans happy and Ohioans furious, and although I don’t have a dog in that race, Obama’s action perturbs me because it’s just another executive overreach of his (albeit a relatively minor one), meddling in a controversy that should rightly be resolved by Congress.

Next up, the city in which he started his political career, Shikaakwa, meaning “wild leek” or “place of the skunk.”

When you think about it, the US actually has a lot of official place names that originate in native American words, or approximations of them.

Maybe it’s time to popularize and bring back Lenapehoking:

It stretched from modern-day Delaware to western Connecticut and Long Island and included parts of eastern Pennsylvania, all of present day New Jersey, and the southern counties of New York State, including Rockland, Orange, Westchester, and Putnam Counties, Nassau County, and the five boroughs of New York City. Along with New York City, Newark, Trenton, Princeton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Delaware, Atlantic City, and numerous other urban and suburban areas are in Lenapehoking today, as are the Jersey Shore, Pine Barrens, the Sourland Mountains, the Delaware Valley, and perhaps some parts of the Catskills, Poconos, and the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.

There is no universal agreement among scholars regarding the autonym of Lenape territory. Some believe the area the Lenape inhabited was called Scheyischbi, or ‘the place bordering the ocean’. According to some people, the Lenape called this territory “Lenapehoking” (lÉ™nape haki-nk), meaning ‘in the land of the Lenape’. This assertion has gained widespread acceptance and is found widely in recent literature on the Lenape, including in the websites of purported Lenape people. Ray Whritenour, a philologist, says that the term does not appear in any sources from the 18th century, but is a modern name coined by Nora Thompson Dean (Touching Leaves Woman) in 1984, in order to provide the archaeologist/author, Herbert C. Kraft, with a convenient term for the area once inhabited by ancestors of the Lenape people.

And I think we can all agree that Webster Lake in Massachusetts should be abolished to make room—lots and lots and lots of room—for Lake Chaubunagungamaugg, or better yet, Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg:

The lake’s name comes from Nipmuc, an Algonquian language, and is said to mean, “Fishing Place at the Boundaries — Neutral Meeting Grounds”. This is different from the humorous translation, “You fish on your side, I’ll fish on my side, and nobody fish in the middle”, thought to have been invented by Laurence J. Daly, editor of The Webster Times.

Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg (/ËŒleɪk tʃəˈɡɒɡəɡɒɡ ËŒmé¦nˈtʃɔːɡəɡɒɡ tʃəˌbÊŒnəˈɡʌŋɡəmɔːɡ/), a 45-letter alternative name for this body of fresh water, is often cited as the longest place name in the United States and one of the longest in the world. It is not spelled correctly on the sign bordering Connecticut.

Today, “Webster Lake” may be the name most used, but some (including many residents of Webster), take pride in reeling off the longer versions.

This lake has several alternative names. Lake Chaubunagungamaugg is the name of the lake as recognized by the U.S. Department of the Interior, however, many area residents, as well as the official website of the town of Webster, consider the longer version correct.

Algonquian-speaking peoples had several different names for the lake as recorded on old maps and historical records. However, all of these were similar in part and had almost the same translation.

The poet Walt Whitman loved American place names, and in his poem “Starting from Paumanok” (a reference to the native American name for Huntington, Long Island, the town of his birth) he wrote:

On my way a moment I pause;
Here for you! and here for America!
Still the Present I raise aloft””Still the Future of The States I harbinge, glad and sublime;
And for the Past, I pronounce what the air holds of the red aborigines.

The red aborigines!
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names;
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco,
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla;
Leaving such to The States, they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names.

O expanding and swift! O henceforth,
Elements, breeds, adjustments, turbulent, quick, and audacious;
A world primal again””Vistas of glory, incessant and branching;
A new race, dominating previous ones, and grander far””with new contests,
New politics, new literatures and religions, new inventions and arts.

These! my voice announcing””I will sleep no more, but arise;
You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

Certain sections of that remind me of none other than Obama—the use of the word “audacious,” for example, and much of those last two stanzas and particularly that last line. “Unprecedented waves and storms,” indeed.

The poem is a fragment of Leaves of Grass, a book of poetry that you may recall featured somewhat prominently in the relationship between Obama’s Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Of course, you may only remember the cigar. But me? I choose to remember the poetry.

Would you live forever?

The New Neo Posted on by

Randomly, I came across these two quotes only two days apart while researching completely different things.

The first is from a post by Richard Fernandez:

One didn’t intellectually convince people to attack the German lines. One led them – a wholly different thing.

“Daly is popularly attributed in Marine Corps lore as yelling, ‘Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?’ to his men during the Battle of Belleau Wood. Daly later told a Marine Corps historian that his words were ‘For Christ’s sake men – come on! Do you want to live forever?’”

It was just a couple of days earlier that I had come across the following in a 1989 review of the book Self-Consciousness by John Updike, which offers this Updike quote from the book:

Now I have long since, in deference to my emphysema, given up smoking, even the smoking of little cigars that, after I broke the cigarette habit, used to get me through the stress of composition. Also, I have given up salt and coffee in deference to high blood pressure and alcohol in deference to methotrexate. The big-bellied Lutheran God within me looks on scoffingly. ‘Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben?’ Frederick the Great thundered at his battle-shy soldiers – ‘Dogs, would you live forever?’ ”

I wondered whether Daly was aware of the Frederick the Great quote, and when I went to Daly’s Wiki page, interestingly enough, the Frederick the Great quote popped up there, too:

An earlier use of a similar phrase is attributed to Frederick the Great: “Lads, do you want to live forever?” (German: Kerle, wollt ihr ewig leben?), addressing retreating Prussian troops at the 1757 Battle of Kolé­n.

Note the daintier form: lads instead of dogs. I bet that “dogs” is correct, though; “lads” just seems impossible in such a context—and, if said, would have been far less memorable.

Daly seems to have cleaned up his own quote, too. But again, I have a sneaking suspicion that “sons of bitches” was almost certainly the original.

Note that both purported originals use a dog metaphor. Are dogs so very cowardly? I thought many of them tend to be rather brave, especially if dealing with danger to their owners or their pups.

The NY Times writes a hit piece on Clarence Thomas…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and Orin Kerr tells us the ways in which the Times has distorted the truth in order to make Thomas look bad (many of the comments there are worth reading, too).

Most liberal Democrats long ago absorbed and swallowed whole the party line on Thomas as a stupid person, and have no idea about the shaky ground on which they base this very firm belief. I would wager if I polled 100 people I know, they would nearly all agree that Thomas is a dullard or worse. This Times article is merely a small refresher course for them, in case they had forgotten, and a way to give a new and spiffy pseudo-scientific shine to their long-entrenched convictions, as well as to school a younger generation who might have missed some of the earlier lessons.