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
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.]
…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.]
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.
Even though it’s not about conservatives, it fits:
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.
…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?
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.
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.
…you better be able to back it up.
This guy had the real thing:
This is a very important article in National Review about the Wisconsin “John Doe” investigations.
If you’re familiar with history, you’ll recognize what’s going on here, and it’s bad. Very bad.
If you’ve read William Sheridan Allen’s The Nazi Seizure of Power, you’ll recognize the resemblance—or at least to something somewhat similar. For example, in a chapter from the book titled “The Terror System,” you’ll find this description of what happened in a small German town shortly after the Nazis had gained control of the government:
On March 30, 1933, it was reported that children playing near a beer garden had found sixty rounds of Army-issue rifle ammunition. The speculation was the Communists had buried them there after the police raids began…
With the propaganda justification for police action firmly established, the Nazis in Thalburg made use of the familiar tactics of repression and terrorism. The homes of potential or actual opponents were repeatedly ransacked and various people arrested…
Not all arrests and house searching were reported in the press, but enough were made known so that the public received a good general impression of what was going on. Furthermore, the way in which police actions were reported was enough to give Thalburgers an idea of the generally arbitrary nature of such actions…
Thus it seems clear that the public in Thalburg had a good idea, by mid-summer 1933, that even to express oneself against the new system was to invite persecution. In fact, now only were Thalburgers aware of this situation, but by their very awareness they reinforced the actual terror apparatus. Each time someone in Thalburg cautioned his neighbor or friend, he was strengthening the general atmosphere of fear.
Later it got even worse (and word also got around of imprisonments and interment in concentration camps such as Dachau):
Under these circumstances the Nazis had very little to do to avoid resistance. They created examples on the left and right and let natural social forces do the rest.Conditions reached the point where those who failed to give the Nazi salute, who left a meeting early, or who ventured a cold look at [one of the local Nazi leaders] was thought to be displaying almost foolhardy recklessness.
Will the MSM cover the Wisconsin John Doe investigations and the newest revelations about them? USA Today has a column by Instapundit Glenn Reynolds. As for the WaPo, I could find nothing about the John Doe raids, but plenty about their supposed findings in an article from about a month ago that tries to paint Walker and the Wisconsin Club for Growth as guilty of campaign finance irregularities.
Any bets on whether the investigations and secret raids will ever be covered properly? We’ll see:
If Republican officials treated political opponents this way it would be national news. But when Wisconsin’s Democratic apparat behaved like Putin’s thugs, it got little attention from the “mainstream” media. One of the good things about Scott Walker’s presidential run is that it will bring these abuses national attention. They deserve it, and the perpetrators deserve punishment.
In a country that actually valued freedom, this story would spark front-page headlines all over the country. It would be all anyone would be talking about for weeks, and nobody would rest until we knew it could never, ever happen again.
We are no longer such a country.
And now for some music:
[NOTE: Here’s a previous post of mine about Walker and the investigations.]
[NOTE II: At the HuffPo, the news is all about the so-called “dark money” campaign financing these investigations are supposed to get at; the raids don’t seem to be an issue. But as Ed Morrissey writes:
The basis for this was the campaign-finance reform movement, which sees money in politics as a greater evil than a government empowered to shut down political speech. The John Doe law in Wisconsin shows exactly why government intervention in political speech is worse than any corruption it attempts to prevent. The use of force in Wisconsin got applied to one side exclusively, and intended to shut down conservatives before they could exercise their legitimate political power. It’s even more egregious than the IRS targeting of conservatives between 2009-2013, but it’s the same kind of abuse of power, and it leverages the same kind of campaign-finance reform statutes that give government at state and federal levels entrée to control political speech.
It’s an affront to liberty, and an affront to the Constitution.
Want to know more about the John Doe law itself?:
…[It] is like a grand jury investigation, without a jury. A single judge is vested with extraordinary power to issue subpoenas and search warrants to compel witnesses to testify in order to determine if a crime may have been committed. And many of these investigations, like the John Doe probe into the Wisconsin conservative organizations and Walker’s campaign, are conducted in secret. Targets or witnesses who speak publicly about them can face jail time for doing so…
The prosecutors and the GAB operated the probe under an exotic theory involving the unconstitutional portions of the campaign finance law that the conservative groups may have illegally coordinated with the Walker campaign during Wisconsin’s partisan recall elections. The theory attempts to transform issue advocacy into express advocacy ”” political messages that endorse or oppose a candidate or tell a voter how to vote.
A federal judge in a related John Doe lawsuit called the prosecution’s theory “simply wrong.”
The investigation featured predawn, paramilitary-style raids on the homes of targets and seizure of their property, including banking records and donor lists, according to court documents.
SCOTUS might be taking up the question of the John Doe laws soon. And this seems to be the go-to place to find a great many articles on the entire subject.]
…Richard Fernandez on the refugees from war-torn Syria and Libya.
It will make you despair of any solution to the situation. There appear to be only two choices. The first is to be overrun with a huge influx of people who present almost insurmountable problems, and at great cost and great risk, including that of admitting terrorists among them. The second choice is to let them die in droves.
In previous generations, people accepted that in dire times there were going to be millions and millions of deaths. We (or some segment of “we”) consider ourselves to be better than that and possessing of more compassion. But in the end, it just might happen, because we can’t even begin to solve all the problems of the world without creating more.
A statistic Fernandez offers that I hadn’t known before, although I’ve researched the subject of these refugees: “Over half the 22 million people of Syria have fled their homes since 2011.”