Memorial Day: if you’re reading this…

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve posted this song before, but I think it bears repeating, especially on Memorial Day.

It’s Tim McGraw’s extraordinarily moving song “If You’re Reading This:”

If you’re readin’ this
My momma’s sittin’ there
Looks like I only got a one way ticket over here.
I sure wish I could give you one more kiss
War was just a game we played when we were kids
Well I’m layin’ down my gun
I’m hanging up my boots
I’m up here with God and we’re both watchin’ over you

So lay me down
In that open field out on the edge of town
And know my soul
Is where my momma always prayed that it would go.
If you’re readin’ this I’m already home.

If you’re readin’ this
Half way around the world
I won’t be there to see the birth of our little girl
I hope she looks like you
I hope she fights like me
And stands up for the innocent and the weak
I’m layin’ down my gun,
I’m hanging up my boots
Tell dad I don’t regret that I followed in his shoes…

The first time I ever heard the song I got the chills as the lyrics unfolded and I realized what it was about, and then again and again as the heartstrings were jerked more and more as the song went on.

I say “the heartstrings were jerked,” which sounds as though I’m being critical and the song is manipulative. Well, it’s manipulative in the sense that it means to affect the listener emotionally, and it means to sell songs. But I see nothing wrong with that, if the emotion is sincere and deep. Most of us do, or should, feel a very strong gratitude to the young men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend liberty here and abroad, and a very strong sorrow that it was necessary. On Memorial Day, we thank them.

What George said to Art , according to Art

The New Neo Posted on by

In an interview with Nigel Farndale of the Telegraph [hat tip: Maggie’s Farm], Art Garfunkle relates a story about George Harrison:

…I [Farndale] ask about the Beatles, specifically George, who felt his talents were overshadowed.

“George came up to me at a party once and said ‘my Paul is to me what your Paul is to you.’”

Indeed. The Pauls are pop music giants, the Georges and Arts pretty big but not quite the same.

Did I speak of size? Art Garfunkle speaks of size, as well:

Actually, another question strikes me [Farndale]. I speculate about whether Paul Simon might have a Napoleon complex. Is there a height thing there, between them?

“I think you’re on to something. I would say so, yes.”

He adds that at school he felt sorry for Paul because of his height, and he offered him love and friendship as a compensation. “And that compensation gesture has created a monster. End of interview.”

Why “monster”? Garfunkel—who also says of himself that “I’m not always kind. I’m judgemental and picky”—seems upset that Simon broke up with him when he’s been willing to reconcile for decades. They have gotten together on quite a few occasions over the years, though.

Obama on the Iran deal: it will have my name on it, therefore you should trust me

The New Neo Posted on by

If you were looking for a monument to supreme egotism, you would have to go far to beat Obama’s statement in this interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg:

“Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this,” he said, referring to the apparently almost-finished nuclear agreement between Iran and a group of world powers led by the United States. “I think it’s fair to say that in addition to our profound national-security interests, I have a personal interest in locking this down.”

I rack my brain to think of another president in our history—or another statesman or even another prominent politician—who would think to say “trust me, because my ego is riding on this.” What on earth does ego have to do with judgment?

In the calculus of what are the most important considerations about any Iran deal, the most important would be “our profound national-security interests” and those of the entire world. That’s what’s riding on it, that’s the reason to “lock it down” (odd phrase for negotiations). The state of Obama’s personal reputation ought to be so low on the list of things to think about that it shouldn’t even be on his radar screen at this point, much less ours.

And yet Obama features it quite prominently, and this is supposed to reassure us? That he would think that way is bad enough, but if he does, he should at least have the good judgment to keep quiet about it. Instead, Obama talks to us about it. His “me, me, me-ism” appears to be something so basic to his thought process that he doesn’t even realize how inappropriately egocentric it sounds.

Obama says he’s got a special personal interest in “locking this down.” But an agreement on nuclear weapons with Iran is not merely a question of applying oneself. Obama may think there’s no limits to his powers, but sizing up Iran and negotiating with a country which is essentially an aggressive, repressive, fanatical enemy isn’t just a matter of trying hard enough and thinking you’re the smartest guy in the room. Even if it were true that Obama wanted and even needed to negotiate a good deal for the US in order to protect his precious reputation, that doesn’t mean he has a clue how to get there from here, or that it’s even possible to do so.

More is revealed in the following passage from Goldberg’s article on his interview with Obama [emphasis mine]:

In the wake of what seemed to have been a near-meltdown in the relationship between the United States and Israel, Obama talked about what he called his love for the Jewish state; his frustrations with it when it fails to live up to both Jewish and universal values; and his hope that, one day soon, its leaders, including and especially its prime minister, will come to understand Israel’s stark choices as he understands Israel’s stark choices. And, just as he did with Saudi Arabia, Obama issued a warning to Israel: If it proves unwilling to live up to its values””in this case, he made specific mention of Netanyahu’s seemingly flawed understanding of the role Israel’s Arab citizens play in its democratic order””the consequences could be profound.

Does anyone on earth believe that Obama “loves” “the Jewish state”? If so, he certainly has a funny way of showing it (“you always hurt the one you love”). But the telling part is that he thinks he is an expert not just on what the US wants from Israel (that, at least, would make a certain amount of sense, since he is the US president and is supposed to represent us) but that he is an expert on Israel’s “stark choices.” He seems to think that he sees those choices more clearly than the Israeli leaders do, and that it is they who should come over to his way of thinking about their own country.

In addition, Obama says that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s understanding of “the role Israel’s Arab citizens play in its democratic order” is “flawed” (unlike Obama’s). Of course, this being Obama, he’s misstating what Netanyahu actually said. Here’s Obama [emphasis mine]:

…[G]oing into [the Israeli] election…there [was] discussion in which it appeared that Arab-Israeli citizens were somehow portrayed [by Netanyahu] as an invading force that might vote, and that this should be guarded against””this is contrary to the very language of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which explicitly states that all people regardless of race or religion are full participants in the democracy. When something like that happens, that has foreign-policy consequences, and precisely because we’re so close to Israel, for us to simply stand there and say nothing would have meant that this office, the Oval Office, lost credibility when it came to speaking out on these issues.

Here’s what Netanyahu actually said. The context was a discussion of turnout and who was behind left-wing “get out the vote” efforts [emphasis mine]:

Funding from foreign governments to get more Israeli Arabs to vote worked, which means all right-wing voters must make sure to go to the polls, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Tuesday.

“The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are going en masse to the polls. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them on buses,” he said…

“We only have you,” a visibly tired Netanyahu pleaded. “Go to the polls, bring your friends and family, vote Mahal [Likud] to close the gap between us and Labor [Zionist Union].”

Netanyahu later clarified that “what’s wrong is not that Arab citizens are voting, but that massive funds from abroad from left-wing NGOs and foreign governments are bringing them en masse to the polls in an organized way, thus twisting the true will of all Israeli citizens who are voting, for the good of the Left.”

Left-wing Americans were instrumental in funding and organizing that get-out-the-vote effort, and some of the people helping the campaign against Netanyahu were people who had previously worked for Obama:

A coalition of U.S.-funded progressive groups has planned a massive get-out-the-vote effort to influence the Israeli elections, targeting communities that are most likely to vote against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-leaning Likud Party, according to a confidential strategy memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The U.S.-based 501(c)(3) group Ameinu sent out the fundraising proposal for the campaign to American donors on Dec. 17, 2014.

The $3 million initiative is described in the document as “a massive, non-partisan Get Out The Vote (GOTV) campaign targeting selected demographic and geographic segments of Israeli society.”

The targeted groups listed in the memo””young secular Israelis, low-income secular Jews, and Arab Israelis””are communities that traditionally oppose right-leaning parties such as Likud.

So Netanyahu was asking Likud voters to energize themselves and get their vote out in order to win despite the high turnout of Arab voters orchestrated by the left (including the American left) in order to defeat him. Obama knew that or should have known it, but he’s demagoguing in order to brand Netanyahu with his favorite charge, racism.

There’s more—much more—in the interview with which to disagree. Basic to Obama’s argument for his Iran deal is the idea that despite everything, Iran is a rational actor. I see no evidence, in either word or deed, that it is true. Obama argues that it is, however:

They [antisemitic European nations throughout history] may make irrational decisions with respect to discrimination, with respect to trying to use anti-Semitic rhetoric as an organizing tool. At the margins, where the costs are low, they may pursue policies based on hatred as opposed to self-interest. But the costs here [in the Iran negotiations] are not low, and what we’ve been very clear [about] to the Iranian regime over the past six years is that we will continue to ratchet up the costs, not simply for their anti-Semitism, but also for whatever expansionist ambitions they may have. That’s what the sanctions represent. That’s what the military option I’ve made clear I preserve represents. And so I think it is not at all contradictory to say that there are deep strains of anti-Semitism in the core regime, but that they also are interested in maintaining power, having some semblance of legitimacy inside their own country, which requires that they get themselves out of what is a deep economic rut that we’ve put them in, and on that basis they are then willing and prepared potentially to strike an agreement on their nuclear program.

Let’s go through these ideas in order:

(1) Antisemitic European nations such as Nazi Germany not only made “irrational decisions with respect to discrimination” of Jews, but they did not do so only “at the margins, where the costs are low.” The costs were high. An enormous amount of the energy and resources that could have been directed towards the war effort itself were directed by the Nazis towards killing the Jews, even towards the end of the war when Germany faced severe shortages of resources of all kinds (including manpower).

(2) In order for Obama’s threats of sanctions or the military option to work to intimidate the Iranian leaders into compliance, the Iranian leaders would have to believe he actually meant it. They are smart people, and they are well aware that his record indicates that he is a paper tiger.

(3) Yes, the Iranian leaders are very interested in retaining power and in getting out of their economic rut. This does motivate them to agree with the US on a nuclear deal, just as Obama says it would. But it does not motivate them to comply with such a deal. It makes sense for them to agree with it, get sanctions lifted, improve economically as a result, and fail to cooperate either through deceit and/or defiance, saying to the west: So, what are you going to do about it? The answer would almost certainly be “nothing,” as has been revealed by the last few years.

(4) I didn’t read the entire interview, but I don’t think that Obama even addressed the fact that Iran’s anti-semitism is embedded in a larger apocalyptic religious vision of theirs that does not shrink from massive destruction and death. This is the basis for the reasoning of those who argue that Iran is not a rational actor like most countries. Obama cannot counter that argument, except as an article of faith—his own—that it is simply not so.

I’ve developed even more respect for Kirsten Powers

The New Neo Posted on by

Much of the time I disagree with Kirsten Powers. But she’s become extremely hard-hitting on the subject of media bias, and in that particular cause she’s becoming a real Joan of Arc. Make no mistake, views such as hers are going to make her persona non grata among her fellow liberals. She may have already burned some of her bridges when she signed on with Fox News, but comments such as this are probably unforgivable, although extremely well-stated:

While Stephanopoulos might be the pié±ata of the week, singling him out misses the point. Simpson is harkening back to an era of journalism that sadly no longer exists. After all, we have a mainstream news media that took a Democratic Party talking point ”” “the war on women” ”” and reported it as if it’s breaking news.

Presuming guilt among Republicans and goodness among Democrats is so reflexive and rewarded in today’s mainstream media culture, it’s not that hard to see how Stephanopoulos truly would not have understood he had an egregious conflict of interest as he faced down Schweizer. Like a fish doesn’t notice the water, today’s mainstream journalists are impervious to their bias in favor of Democratic candidates or liberal issues. They believe they are being objective because they have mistaken their ideological belief system for truth. As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has noted repeatedly, “The facts have a liberal bias.”

This view has fertile ground in which to flourish, as the ideological and intellectual diversity of the nation’s newsrooms decreases.

Powers thinks Stephanopoulos was wrong to do a piece on the Clinton Foundation without reporting his own involvement. But she asks an excellent question: “…[D]oes anyone actually believe that had he not made the donations, the interview would have gone differently?”

Study about the persuasiveness of gay canvassing was apparently bogus

The New Neo Posted on by

An alert reader send me a link to this article debunking the study described in this previous post of mine.

Donald Green, the Columbia political science professor who was the senior author on the study, which was published in Science and featured on many shows including “This American Life,” has said, “I am deeply embarrassed by this turn of events and apologize to the editors, reviewers, and readers of Science.” His co-author (and the person who actually did the supposed study), UCLA graduate student Michael LaCour, has said, “I stand by the findings,” and has “also said he will provide ‘a definitive response’ by May 29.”

Faked studies are unusual but hardly unheard of, and some of them have gotten far more publicity than this one. For example, the autism/vaccination reports that have wreaked so much havoc. So I find it odd that Green expressed this thought:

“There was an incredible mountain of fabrications with the most baroque and ornate ornamentation. There were stories, there were anecdotes, my dropbox is filled with graphs and charts, you’d think no one would do this except to explore a very real data set,” Green told Ira Glass, host of the This American Life radio program, on Wednesday.

I have some sympathy with Green, actually. We all think we can’t be fooled by a con, and it’s hard to believe people will go to such lengths to dupe others. But hard as it may be, the evidence is overwhelming that it happens all too often, and that healthy skepticism is always in order.

After all, Green was talking to Ira Glass, who—although not related to fabulist Stephen Glass—has a last name that is a reminder of how easy it is to fool people, and the sort of exhaustive detail a con artist is capable of generating in order to do so.

Here’s another book for the liberals on your gift list

The New Neo Posted on by

Emma Sky has written a book entitled The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq. A review can be found here, and it sounds fascinating, although I haven’t read it.

A British Oxford-educated progressive with extensive experience in the Middle East in what might be called the peace process (Palestine/Israel), Sky volunteered to advise in Iraq in the early days of the occupation, and then later during the Obama administration:

Although opposed to the invasion of Iraq, Sky volunteered to join the Coalition Provisional Authority and served as the Governorate Coordinator of Kirkuk from 2003-2004. From 2007-2010, Sky served as the Political Advisor to U.S. General Raymond T. Odierno when he was the Commanding General of Multi-National Corps ”“ Iraq and also as Commanding General of U.S. Forces Iraq.

According to the WSJ review of her book, Sky got the eye-opening of her life when she discovered that the US military she had previously detested and sneered at was worthy of deep respect. She got another when Barack Obama, a man she had fully and wholeheartedly supported, won the presidency and proceeded to let everything so hard-fought in Iraq “unravel.” Her word: unravel.

I saw Ms. Sky the other day on Fox News and she immediately caught my attention; I wondered who she was, because I didn’t know. I had missed word of her book when it first came out a month ago. As I said, I haven’t read it, so I’m not sure, but it seems to me that because of her background it might be the very thing to give to the Bush-bashing Obama-supporting liberals on your gift list.

Duggar watch: the left is chortling with glee…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and pointing with anger and derision at the revelations that Josh Duggar, now 27 and married with children, once sexually molested several minor girls and the issue was dealt with extra-judicially.

I’ve written about the Duggars before, here. They are a fundamentalist Christian family who have very strict rules about dating and sex within dating (basically, there is none; not even kissing), do not believe in birth control (“19 Kids and Counting”), have a reality TV show, and had already aroused intense ire on the left for all the reasons you would think.

But now the left feels it really has something to sink its teeth into. Hypocrites! Degenerates! Coverup! Child molesters!

Most of the articles on the subject make a huge point about the fact that Josh molested “minor girls.” But they don’t call him a minor at the time, although his stated age (a month after his 14th birthday for the first charge, and about a year later for the second, although that’s not as clear) indicates that he was most definitely a minor at the time, too. The charges appear to have been fondling, and the details provided in the articles I read indicate it was touching on the girls’ breasts while sleeping.

There is no indication of the ages of the girls except that they were minors. Were they around his age? Or were they young children? Children much younger than he was at the time don’t have much in the way of breasts, so my guess (and it’s only a guess) is that Josh was not a pedophile, but chose girls who were around puberty or past it.

When I was being trained in the field and worked on some research involving child sexual abuse, the definition of sexual abuse rather than sexual play was that there had to be at least a five year difference in age between the minor perpetrator and his/her minor victims. It is inappropriate sexual behavior for Josh Duggar to have touched any girl of any age on her breast while she was sleeping, but it is not necessarily actionable abuse (even in juvenile court, which is exactly where he would have landed if this had gone that way) if the age differential is not large enough.

At least, that’s the way it used to be many years ago. Perhaps this has changed; many things have. This article indicates that they certainly have; 14-year-old perps and even younger can land on 25-year sex offender charts due to the Adam Walsh Act.

Many professionals in the field think this is wrong, and I agree. Molestation by children of that age, especially acts such as fondling, are incredibly common and ordinarily are not the mark of sex offenders of the future:

Basic data about child-on-child sex abuse is detailed in an authoritative, Justice Department-sponsored analysis of crime data from 29 states. Conducted by three prominent researchers, the 2009 analysis found that juveniles accounted for 35.6% of the people identified by police as having committed sex offenses against minors.

Of these young offenders, 93% were male, and the peak ages for offending were 12 through 14, the researchers found. Of the victims, 59% were younger than 12 and 75% were female.

The report referred to a popular misconception that juvenile sex offenders are likely to reoffend, and said numerous studies over the years have shown the opposite ”” that 85 to 95% of offending youth are never again arrested for sex crimes.

University of Oklahoma pediatrics professor Mark Chaffin, a co-author of the 2009 report, says efforts to deal constructively with juvenile sex offenders are complicated by the tendency of some legislators and others to lump them together with adult sexual predators.

“That used to be the message ”” that we should apply the template from what we know about adult pedophilia,” Chaffin said. “Now that the data has shown most of those assumptions were wrong, it’s difficult to undo those messages that people in the advocacy and treatment fields were putting out a generation ago.”

Experts say the young offenders differ from adult sex offenders not only in their lower recidivism rates, but in the diversity of their motives and abusive behavior.

While some youths commit violent, premeditated acts of sexual assault and rape, others get in trouble for behavior arising from curiosity, naivete, peer pressure, momentary irresponsibility, misinterpretation of what they believed was mutual interest, and a host of other reasons.

Josh Duggar clearly belongs in the latter group. He has not offended again, he long ago apologized to his girl victims and they forgave him, but the Duggar-haters (and there are many) cannot possibly let it rest at that.

When I was a child, sexual molestation of children was a hush-hush thing—denied and not talked about. Child victims really were frightened to speak about it, thinking that they had done something to bring it on and feeling tremendous shame. Now the table has turned and we take it far more seriously as a society (unless, of course, it’s committed by a famous movie director such as Roman Polanski, whose sexual predation of the underage as an adult has been winked at by many in Hollywood). Child victims are still sometimes reluctant to come forward as well as afraid, but much less so than before, and the perpetrators face more serious consequences most of the time. But it seems to me that some sort of re-calibration for child perpetrators of the “curiosity” type, whose offenses are limited to fondling and who appear to have learned their lessons, is in order.

As for the charge of hypocrisy of the Duggars—children are sexually curious, and all families (including, of course, those who like the Duggars limit the sexuality of their adolescents very vigorously) have to deal with the raging hormones of their growing children as they mature. With nineteen children, it’s not at all surprising that there would be some problems of this nature. It seems to have been dealt with effectively and nipped in the bud.

Christians have a belief in the power of forgiveness. Leftists not so much, unless the wrongdoers are on the left.

[ADDENDUM: A commenter brought up the Lena Dunham sibling abuse case, which reminded me that I’d written on that subject, too, and my position was consistent with what I’ve written here. You might be interested in reading my earlier post about Dunham (whom I can’t stand). In that post I went into considerably more detail about what we know about the phenomenon of intersibling abuse.]

Let me know if you’re still having a redirect problem

The New Neo Posted on by

I mentioned earlier that some people were having a problem getting to the blog or going to links on this blog. They were being redirected to a number of other websites instead. Apparently there is some problem with sitemeter that is causing this to happen, so I removed sitemeter and have installed statcounter.

Let me know if any of you continue to have difficulty, or if it’s been fixed now.

Everybody loves sex

The New Neo Posted on by

While it may be that Everybody Loves Raymond, does everyone actually love sex, as film director Gaspar Noe said at the Cannes Film Festival the other day?:

“I have friends who love money, some who love coke, some who love cinema, but the common point is that everyone loves having sex,” the Paris-based director said at a press conference.

“So why is it so poorly represented in cinema? It’s to do with commercial and legal pressures,” he added.

Noe’s latest film was the hot ticket on the French Riviera, with hundreds trying to squeeze their way into the midnight screening on Wednesday night.

“Love” leaves nothing to the imagination as it tells the story of a young couple’s tempestuous love affair, featuring over a dozen extremely graphic unsimulated sex scenes, including close-up ejaculations, swingers’ clubs, a threesome and a transvestite prostitute.

Asked why he felt the need to show such explicit scenes, the Argentine-born Noe said, “I was making a film about love, not about Swiss banks or Scientology.”

Pornography has always been with us. But few people have ever thought pornography was about love. There is indeed an audience—a vast one—for explicit sex. But it didn’t used to be in the regular film industry. Now that everything goes, I suppose films such as Noe’s were inevitable.

Love and sex may go together like a horse and carriage, but not necessarily and not always. People sometimes love and yet aren’t that keen for sex. And it’s an indisputable fact that people sometimes engage in sex without love—it’s not for nothing that prostitution is called “the oldest profession.” What’s more, some people find sex, even with someone they love, either difficult, distasteful, painful, uninspiring, dull, or frightening. And some have little or no sex drive at all.

But that’s not really the issue. Even for those who do love sex, does that mean they necessarily love watching actors engage in it on the big screen? The answer is a resounding “no” (not “Noe”). Noe’s film probably will get many viewers because of its novelty and excitement factor, as well as curiosity, but if it’s anything like HBO’s “Tell Me You Love Me,” it will be a big snooze when it’s not busy being an embarrassment.

I watched “Tell Me You Live Me” out of curiosity and also because it was supposedly about the lives and relationships of several couples who were in sex therapy. I believe the sex was somewhat simulated, but the viewer certainly was treated to a lot of nudity, including male organs and what certainly appeared to be sex. I found myself fast forwarding through the sex scenes in order to get to the dialogue, which for the most part was equally boring and embarrassing. I ended up feeling sorry for the actors, although perhaps they were rather proud of themselves.

In answer to Noe’s question as to why sex is so poorly represented in cinema, I would answer that it’s because most of those who want to watch pornography want to watch pornography, not an art film. And most of those (particularly the female portion of the viewing public) who want to watch a film about a love affair don’t really want to watch a lot of actual sex up on the big screen mixed with that love affair dialogue. There’s something called privacy, and something called the power of the imagination.

There also used to be something called community standards of modesty and decency, but we won’t even talk about that anymore.

[NOTE: I would add that it’s interesting to see the other things Noe lists as being what his friends love besides sex: money, coke, and cinema.]

The Clinton emails: what difference does it make?

The New Neo Posted on by

“What difference does it make?” has become a joking ironic reference to something that actually is important but that is being treated as unimportant because it reflects poorly on a favored Democrat.

Hillary asked the question two and a half years ago at the Benghazi hearings. This was the quote in context:

With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.

Clinton has been criticized for her indifference, her brushing aside of the questions being asked her. But I’ve long been puzzled as to why few seem to point out that her answer is actually nonsensical. She sets up a choice between alternative explanations A and B for the killings. Alternative A is “because of a protest;” we know that was not the case. But Alternative B, “guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans,” is also not the case—nor, as far as I know, has it ever been alleged to been the case by anyone. The actual accusation has been that the Benghazi killings were acts that were not spontaneous but instead were planned ahead of time by terrorists, and the September 11 anniversary date was part of the plan.

But in this fake-choice, Hillary posits a spontaneous thrill-crime, the sort of thing that might happen when a bunch of teens are out walking the streets at night and decide to smash a store window and take a few things. She might just as well have said of the four Benghazi dead “or a meteor fell on their heads;” that’s how implausible and irrelevant her Alternative B was.

Somehow, in all the fuss about “what difference does it make?” we’ve lost sight of the duplicity and illogic of the rest of her statement. And her illogic doesn’t end there. When she suggests it doesn’t make any difference at this point what the circumstances were that caused the murder of the four Americans in Benghazi, and then follows that by immediately stating, “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again,” she is saying something absurd. How on earth can you “figure out what happened” and “do everything” to prevent a repeat of the occurrence if you don’t care to even ask how it happened and why?

Now over two years later we’re being treated to the slow dribbling out of whichever of her emails Hillary decided to spare from destruction. I’m sure there are some interesting things revealed by the emails she’s releasing, as detailed by William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection and Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. Right now the topic is Clinton’s communications with Sidney Blumenthal, and at what point in time she received information that the Benghazi attack was caused by terrorism.

For now, however, I will leave it to others to sift through the fine points of the Clinton emails, because I continue to think these details only matter to us on the right. If the rest of America didn’t care about the events of Benghazi and the initial coverup, it seems to me that they are highly unlikely to care now about what Sidney Blumenthal said, when he said it, and in what capacity. Before the Obama years I thought that the majority of Americans would probably care about something like the entire Benghazi episode and the details of the coverup, but I have become convinced that they do not anymore unless such acts are perpetrated (or alleged to have been perpetrated) by Republicans and therefore hammered home by the MSM.

That said, however, the recent MSM coverage of the Hillary email problems (and the Clinton Foundation problems) has been puzzling to me from the first because it has been more hard-hitting than I would have expected. In my initial posts on the subject (see this and this), I wondered why newspapers such as the NY Times were covering the story in a manner that, if not as aggressive as if it had been about a Republican, was still a great deal more critical than I was expecting. I aired a number of theories, including the fact that they want someone other than Hillary to run. But it’s not yet clear.

One thing of which I’m fairly sure, though, is that most of Hillary’s supporters would support her no matter what and are not at all interested in this story whatever it may end up revealing. What’s more, if somehow Clinton is not nominated next year by the Democratic Party (although I continue to think she will be), they will vote for whoever is nominated.

So my answer to the question “what difference does it make?” is “None.” Actually, I’ll revise that to say that perhaps the only difference it makes is that it serves to further a deepen the cynicism among the American public about politicians and the way they function. Increasingly, they are all seen by growing numbers of voters as corrupt liars, and the only choice is the choice of which liar is more likely to help that voter’s particular interest group and give it more benefits.