The Clintons: above the law

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “clarityseeker” has a question for me about the Clintons:

What is it that drives them to “feel” above the law, and to operate on the premise that they need not adhere to norms, social standards, much as the rest of us do?

My speculative answer—

The Clintons have always been powerful people, even when young. As early as college and law school they were widely considered to be brilliant and charismatic, both in different ways. Recall, for example, that Hillary was chosen to give a commencement speech in her graduating year at Wellesly, a very unusual honor. The main speaker was Senator Edward Brooke, but she stole his thunder:

Clinton, then just Hillary Diane Rodham, was chosen by her peers to be the first student speaker to deliver a commencement address at Wellesley College. Clinton electrified 400 of her peers at the women’s liberal arts college with a fiery speech that captured the young generation’s disillusionment over President Richard Nixon’s war in Vietnam.

…Brooke spoke first and suggested the anti-war protests sweeping across college campuses were a poor way of exercising students’ constitutional right to assemble, saying “coercive protests” would discourage support from people empathetic to their cause. Clinton, who had led demonstrations against the Vietnam War on campus, wasn’t afraid to take a moment to go off script and respond to Brooke’s speech.

Life magazine did an article that featured her; the whole thing was somewhat like the fuss made when Obama was chosen as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Husband Bill was a star in school too. He was twice president of his class at Georgetown, for example. Then later, Rhodes Scholar. Suffice to say the accolades came early and they were numerous.

Can you imagine the power these two people felt when they united forces in marriage? Remember, also, that when Bill became the governor of Arkansas he was only 32, and the youngest governor in the country.

Of course, being a person with a record of early achievements doesn’t mean you will consider yourself above the rules that govern the little people. Nor do I think this happened right away with the Clintons (although Bill was always that way as a sexual adventurer, and the more he got away with it the more immune from consequences he felt). But as time went on, the combination of brains, people fawning on them, and the gaining of more and more power over time must have fed the feeling that they were immune to the usual rules for public servants.

The most important thing of all was that they got away with it. The more a person gets away with, the more impervious he/she feels. The pinnacle of all of that was what ought to have been the nadir: the Lewinsky scandal. Bill Clinton was finally caught and exposed and what happened? Essentially nothing, although it was embarrassing for a while.

My hunch is that the Clintons’ primary motivation has never been money, and initially money really didn’t enter into it very much at all. It was only slowly that money became a big part of it, and then that element grew in importance as the Clintons became very accustomed to their lavish lifestyle.

I submit, therefore, that it is somewhat rational for the Clintons to believe they are above the law. Events so far have proven them correct, haven’t they?

I’ve got a theory about what happened on Skywest Airlines Flight 5622

The New Neo Posted on by

There were some awfully mysterious doings on Skywest 5622:

SkyWest Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration appeared to give conflicting explanations for why three people passed out mid-flight Wednesday, forcing a plane to make an emergency landing.

With nearly 80 passengers on board, SkyWest Airlines Flight 5622 — operating as United Express on behalf of United Airlines — was 40 minutes into its flight from Chicago to Hartford, Connecticut, when a passenger in the middle of the plane began to lose consciousness…

The first passenger who lost consciousness received quick attention from Mary Cunningham, a registered nurse sitting nearby who got up to help. Cunningham said the passenger “was gray, her color looked awful.”

The nurse said after she got the sick passenger some oxygen, the woman became more alert.

“I went back to my seat,” Cunningham told reporters, “and they called me back because the person right behind her passed out.”

But then Cunningham started to feel faint herself. “I started to feel out of breath, so did the flight attendant. Everyone in that section of the flight started to not feel well,” Cunningham said.

The plane had dropped to a lower altitude in case there was a pressurization problem, and it safely made an emergency landing. But the depressurization theory was undermined by the fact that no warning was sounded and the cabin masks didn’t drop as they ordinarily would have. So as of now, everyone is stumped as to what went wrong.

What’s my theory? It’s subject to change if new information comes out, but I think the first person may have fainted for some reason that had nothing to do with the plane, and the rest fell prey to the phenomenon known as mass psychogenic illness, a form of mass hysteria. It’s surprisingly common, and the symptoms the people on the Skywest flight experienced fit the bill. What’s more, it appears (at least from my reading of the article) that all of the sufferers except the first one were aware of at least one other person with symptoms. That’s how mass psychogenic illness works, with the problem spreading by the power of suggestion:

Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness or just sociogenic illness, is “the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting members of a cohesive group, originating from a nervous system disturbance involving excitation, loss or alteration of function, whereby physical complaints that are exhibited unconsciously have no corresponding organic aetiology. MPI is distinct from other collective delusions, also included under the blanket terms of mass hysteria, in that MPI causes symptoms of disease, though there is no organic cause.”

Although symptoms are not limited to females, the majority of sufferers are women. Commonly exhibited symptoms are headache, dizziness and light-headedness, nausea, fatigue, and difficulty breathing, and fainting is not unheard of. Here’s a description of a previous episode:

On the morning of Thursday 7 October 1965, at a girls’ school in Blackburn in England, several girls complained of dizziness. Some fainted. Within a couple of hours, 85 girls from the school were rushed by ambulance to a nearby hospital after fainting. Symptoms included swooning, moaning, chattering of teeth, hyperpnea, and tetany.

Of course, some people would say that even if no physical cause is found, such a cause nevertheless must exist and the mass illness is not psychogenic. I suppose that’s possible in some cases, but I believe the group psychogenic phenomenon definitely exists. One of the hallmarks of these episodes is the pattern of awareness among the people becoming ill, and of course another is that no actual illness is ever discovered (except at times in the very first victim).

The mind is an amazing thing.

An enormous thank you to everyone who donated

The New Neo Posted on by

Pledge week is over. I am deeply grateful for every penny that was donated.

So thank you all, very very much.

And I am deeply grateful to everyone who comments here. Even the lurkers are appreciated, whoever you may be.

As in the chorus to this song:

We’re all in this thing together
Walkin’ the line between faith and fear
This life don’t last forever
When you cry I taste the salt in your tears

Is Hillary in even more trouble?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know.

As I wrote yesterday, I’m not sure what offense would be enough to cause a significant number of her supporters to turn on her.

But the NY Times is once again covering a story that could harm her:

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well. . .

Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation…

Most of the commentary about the article linked by memeorandum seems to be from the right rather than the left. But I was especially curious how the left would cover it, and this from New York Magazine (not the left, exactly, but it will have to do) seems to set the tone: there’s no smoking gun, so no big deal:

While that sounds fishy, so far there’s no evidence that the donations affected the deal’s approval. In addition to the secretary of State, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) includes the attorney general and the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce, and Energy. It’s also possible that the decision was made by deputies or assistant secretaries in those agencies, not the cabinet members themselves. The Clinton campaign provided a statement from a former assistant secretary of State who said Clinton “never intervened” while he was handling CFIUS matters. Telfer said he made the donations to support his business partner, the Canadian mining executive Frank Giustra, and “the donations started before there was any idea of this takeover.”…

A source with “knowledge of the Clinton Foundation’s fund-raising operation” confirmed the obvious to the Times: Many donors are giving to the Clinton Foundation because they hope the money will advance their cause. “Why do you think they are doing it ”” because they love them?” the source quipped. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they were successful in their efforts to influence the Clintons. If the early reports are any indication, untangling the former (and possibly future) first couple’s professional and charity work is going to be an arduous task for journalists, and the findings may test the limits of America’s interest in Clinton scandals.

Somehow I doubt that journalists are up to that “arduous task.” And note with that final sentence (“the findings may test the limits of America’s interest in Clinton scandals”), I think New York is hoping that its readers, and American voters as a whole, are experiencing enough scandal fatigue that they won’t be up to the arduous task of caring whether or not soon-to-be-Democratic-presidential-nominee Hillary Clinton is corrupt.

Short of a video showing Hillary telling the donor “I didn’t support you before, but now that you’ve given me this money I do,” I can’t see how there would be a smoking gun here to discover. And of course, it goes without saying that if it were a Republican (or a Democratic enemy of Obama’s such as Menendez) being implicated, the reaction to a similar story would be very, very different.

Here’s my question, and it’s mostly a rhetorical one because I know the answer: Whatever happened to the idea of avoiding even the appearance of impropriety? Yes, I know; how quaint, and only for Republicans anyway. But if anything illustrates why it’s best to drop all entanglements that might give that appearance, it’s the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.

[NOTE: Oh, and there’s the little matter of tax returns:

For three years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government contributions reported in preceding years.

Those entries were errors, according to the foundation: several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation’s work on climate change and economic development through this three-year period. Those governments were identified on the foundation’s annually updated donor list, along with broad indications of how much each had cumulatively given since they began donating.

“We are prioritizing an external review to ensure the accuracy of the 990s from 2010, 2011 and 2012 and expect to refile when the review is completed,” Craig Minassian, a foundation spokesman, said in an email.

The decision to review the returns was made last month following inquiries from Reuters, and the foundation has not ruled out extending the review to tax returns extending back 15 or so years.

Perhaps the IRS was too busy auditing conservative groups to catch the Clinton errors.]

If you’re anywhere near central Massachusetts this Saturday…

The New Neo Posted on by

…I strongly recommend you go see the movie “Run Boy Run.”

It is showing on Saturday, April 25 at 8:15 PM in Springfield, Massachusetts, at (of all places) the auditorium of the Basketball Hall of Fame. In fact, if you’re within driving distance, I urge you to make a special trip. It’s that good.

The movie was made in 2013, but it’s not available yet in DVD and I wonder whether it ever will be. If not, that’s shocking, because it’s an extraordinary film in every way. Story and script, but in particular the extremely fine acting from the international cast, the members of which each speak in their native tongues (mostly Polish, but quite a bit of German as well as Yiddish), as well as the cinematography. Never did Poland and northern Germany (which sometimes stands in for Poland) look so beautiful, in aching contrast to the searing story.

It’s full of brutality but balanced by heroism and the compassion of strangers who literally risk their own lives to help a small boy. I’ve never seen a film dealing with the Holocaust and World War II that deals so well with the different ways people reacted, from cruelty and eager cooperation to ambivalence and/or indifference to tentative sympathy and small acts of kindness to self-sacrificing courage of sort I would describe as nearly saintly. The film engenders so many emotions and provokes so much thought that it is one that will stay with you forever.

I would offer a trailer here (there are several on YouTube) but I hesitate because I think the trailers give away too many plotlines that should remain a surprise. So I’ll leave that to you.

But please, if you have a chance to see the movie, go.

[NOTE: If you’re a basketball fan, the Hall of Fame is right there, too. If you’re an Emily Dickinson fan, the house in the lovely New England town of Amherst where she lived and wrote her poems is a fascinating place to visit, and probably a bit different from the way you had pictured it.]

More about that video and conservative infighting

The New Neo Posted on by

I was on the road most of yesterday and didn’t have time to respond to the comments at the thread with the Monty Python video till just now. Seems to me that the misunderstandings of what I was attempting to say with the post are big enough that the subject deserves a post of its own.

I’m completely aware that the scene in the video is meant to mock the Left. But it also mocks the sort of infighting—especially on smaller details when in the larger sense there is basic agreement—that weakens or destroys a movement or a cause.

And of course I’m aware that “Republican” does not equal “conservative.” We’ve certainly discussed that here, over and over.

My point, however, was that infighting among conservatives, and especially nit-picky objections to conservative candidates, makes it possible for a weaker, “establishment” candidate to be nominated.

To those who write that there have been no conservative candidates for president since Reagan, my response is that there have been plenty of them. None of them have won the Republican nomination, though, in part because of splits in the conservative wing of the party, but also because they’ve just not been very good candidates.

I wrote about that in this 2012 post, in which I said:

A while back I ran a post with a list of every Republican who has run in the primaries since 1976 (at least all those who stayed in for any length of time, and even some who didn’t). Let’s take another look at it, and please tell me what available winner-conservative candidate should have been nominated instead of loser-RINO candidates Bush I (1992), Dole (1996), and McCain (2008).

Because I don’t see it. Really, what you’ve got there for conservative candidates after 1980 is Pat Buchanan (several times), Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, Mike Huckabee””and (drum roll, please) Mitt Romney in 2008, when Romney was considered a conservative alternative to McCain…

You can find that more complete list of candidates here. In addition, of course, in 2012 you had Gingrich, Bachmann, and Santorum on the conservative side (not sure where to put Rick Perry, but I’m pretty sure Ron Paul doesn’t qualify as conservative). They all had huge drawbacks in terms of the ability to draw votes in the general election (especially in that hard-to-define quality, likeability, which Reagan had in spades), and at any rate they split the conservative vote in the primaries and did not win.

So I don’t agree that there’s been some sort of suppression of conservative candidates who otherwise would have done well in the general. That’s a myth conservatives like to tell themselves, IMHO, to cover up the fact that the conservative candidates in the last few decades have been weak and unappealing in various ways.

This year, however, is a very different story. The Republicans are blessed with a crop of young, smart, conservative candidates, in particular Walker, Cruz, and Rubio. Note that two are Hispanic, and two are actually “likeable” in the sense I mean: Rubio and Walker (sorry, Cruz; I like you, but you don’t have that “it” factor). I also like Carson and Fiorina—and they have the advantages of being black and being a woman, respectively—but both lack experience in political office, which makes them vulnerable to attack on that score. As for Rand Paul, he takes up the space formerly occupied by his father, only a kinder, gentler, smarter, less flaky version. And Rick Perry is, once again, Rick Perry (whom I also like but he just doesn’t seem to be able to get traction).

Let me be clear: I think this year is the year a conservative has a very good chance of winning the Republican nomination. And I think if it’s the right conservative (who to me at this point seems to be Walker or Rubio, although that’s subject to change) he could actually win the presidency, even against tough Electoral College odds.

Conservative voters have to be smart, though, and not start nit-picking on every little thing. Most importantly of all, I suggest they not stay home if their favored conservative doesn’t win the nomination. If you’re a Cruz supporter, for example (Cruz to my way of thinking being the “purest” and most “principled” conservative in the race), not voting for Rubio or Walker in the general if either wins the nomination would be an extraordinarily self-destructive thing to do, although I have no doubt the people doing it would argue that it’s principled.

The Clinton Foundation and the voter

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems that, at the moment, somewhat of a big deal is being raised about the Clinton Foundation.

Why that particular topic, and why now? After all, to me (and probably to a lot of other people) it’s no worse than many other things Hillary Clinton has done.

This particular offense, however, is more likely to rile the leftist-populist strain in the Democratic Party, the Occupiers who regard Elizabeth Warren as their heroine rather than Hillary. I think that if the current flap manages to gain any traction at all (which is still a question mark) it will be for that reason. And I submit that the issue will only matter before the nomination, not after it. The goal is to get someone else nominated who is more to the left than Hillary, and if that fails, pretty much the entire left will rally round her despite her shortcomings.

By the way, although Elizabeth Warren has declined to run, I think she would respond to a draft.

Still another potential candidate is—get ready for it—Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York, who seems intent on becoming the even-more-leftist alternative to the leftist alternative of Warren:

De Blasio’s hope, the operative said, is a “Draft de Blasio’’ movement will develop among progressive activists over the next several months that will lead to the mayor being able to defeat Clinton in the primary elections next year in much the same way leftist Sen. George McGovern successfully challenged the initially front-running establishment Democratic candidate, Sen. Edmund Muskie, more than 40 years ago.

At first I thought this a preposterous idea. But then I decided that stranger things have happened. Who would have thought de Blasio could pull off election to the mayorship of New York City? So although he may not be a women “whose time has come” like Hillary, and he might not be a black “whose time had come” like Obama, he might be regarded as the next best thing to being a woman and/or being black: a leftist man with a black wife who used to be a lesbian. That should go a way towards protecting him from any charges of insufferably privileged passé white maleness.

As for Hillary and the foundation, my guess is that to turn off the rank and file Democratic voter she would have to do a lot worse than that; I really can’t even imagine what it would take at this point. And it would take even more egregiously offensive acts on her part to get the rank and file to vote for one of those evil Republicans instead.

Scott Walker…

The New Neo Posted on by

…touches the third rail of reform of legal immigration:

“In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying we will make adjustments,” Walker said. “The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages…

“It defies reason to argue that the record admission of new foreign workers has no negative effect on the wages of American workers, including the wages of past immigrants hoping to climb into the middle class.”

In his Beck interview, Walker also repeated his recent comments that people in the country illegally should return to their countries of origin first, which has drawn criticism over comparisons to former 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney saying he supported “self-deportation.”

“No amnesty, if someone wants to be a citizen, they have to go back to their country of origin and get in line behind everybody else who’s been waiting,” Walker said.

You may recall that many on the right have criticized Walker for previously being an amnesty advocate. He explains that he’s changed his mind, and why:

Walker repeated his recent comments that he used to support “amnesty,” or a path to citizenship for immigrants in the United States illegally, but does not anymore, saying he’s since learned more about the issue.

How you feel about all of this depends on whether you believe him. Some people can’t stand any candidate who’s ever changed his/her mind on an important issue because they believe the new position isn’t sincerely held, almost by definition. But I’ve never understood that, and that was true even before my own change experience. Some changes are insincere political tactics, but some are sincere and represent exactly what Walker says—a switch based on new information that’s more complete.

A change of position is a lot more suspect when it’s at odds with the politician’s general point of view, and when the person keeps switching over and over and over on a large variety of subjects. But Walker has basically demonstrated his conservative bona fides by his actions, and he’s been pretty consistent in general. So I have no trouble believing that his change of position on amnesty—which is a shift to the more conservative point of view, and in line with his other opinions—is a sincere one.

Politicians don’t always lie, do they?

What was that Obama said about flexibility?

The New Neo Posted on by

The following came up recently, and I thought it important enough to merit its very own post.

Remember this moment back in March of 2012?:

Mr Medvedev, who steps down in May, said he would pass on Mr Obama’s message to his successor Vladimir Putin, according to an audio recording of comments the two leaders made during a meeting in Seoul, South Korea.

Mr Obama says: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defence, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.”

Mr Medvedev replies: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you ”¦”

Mr Obama retorts: “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

Americans knew about this statement of Obama’s prior to the 2012 election. Why didn’t it seem important? It probably did to most of the people who read this blog, because it fit into their already-existent framework of knowledge and opinion about Obama’s philosophy, plans, and activities. As for me, I had already predicted back in
November of 2010 that if Obama were to be elected to a second term in 2012, it would be a no-holds-barred radical one, exactly for the reason he mentioned to Medvedev, which is that he no longer would have to stand for re-election.

The Obama statement to Medvedev tells you something important, which is that Obama knew that the things he was planning to do in a second term would be very unpopular with the American people. Therefore he was planning to keep the voters in the dark about some of his intentions until after his re-election. His election and re-election were founded on a conscious and deliberate deception (or series of deceptions) perpetrated upon the American people.

This may seem obvious. It was even obvious then. But I think it needs to be made absolutely explicit. And it’s in light of that knowledge that no one should be surprised that Obama lied strategically about Iran’s breakthrough time.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how the same people so incensed about their notion that Bush lied about the presence of WMDs in Iraq (although he did not lie; to lie about something you have to know the truth and misrepresent it) are just fine with Obama’s actual lies.

Obama is Christian-victim-blind

The New Neo Posted on by

Referring to the horrific act of “15 Muslim asylum-seekers [who] reportedly threw 12 Christian asylum-seekers overboard as they made their way from Libya to Sicily this week,” Kirsten Powers writes:

As [Italian PM] Renzi was questioned about the incident, Obama was mute on the killings. He failed to interject any sense of outrage or even tepid concern for the targeting of Christians for their faith. If a Christian mob on a ship bound for Italy threw 12 Muslims to their death for praying to Allah, does anyone think the president would have been so disinterested? When three North Carolina Muslims were gunned down by a virulent atheist, Obama rightly spoke out against the horrifying killings. But he just can’t seem to find any passion for the mass persecution of Middle Eastern Christians or the eradication of Christianity from its birthplace.

We’ve seen this sequence before. A Muslim or several Muslim murder members of a different religion—sometimes Christians, sometimes Jews—in an act that is explicitly and unequivocally motivated by religious intolerance, and Obama is silent on the matter of the motivation as well as the religion of the targets. And yet if he feels a crime motivated by hatred against a Muslim or black person has occurred, he does not hesitate to describe it as such.