Was Snowden’s action a foreign operation?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not usually a conspiracist, but I vote “yes” on this one by Edward Jay Epstein:

Edward Snowden’s massive misappropriations of classified documents from the inner sanctum of U.S. intelligence is mainly presented by the media as a whistleblowing story. In this narrative””designed by Mr. Snowden himself””he is portrayed as a disgruntled contractor for the National Security Agency, acting alone, who heroically exposed the evils of government surveillance beginning in 2013.

The other way of looking at it””based on the number and nature of documents Mr. Snowden took, and the dates when they were taken””is that only a handful of the secrets had anything to do with domestic surveillance by the government and most were of primary value to an espionage operation…

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2014, that “The vast majority of the documents that Snowden . . . exfiltrated from our highest levels of security had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities.” Time magazine on April 3 quoted Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), the head of the House Intelligence Committee, as saying Mr. Snowden was “definitely under the influence of Russian officials.”

On June 10, 2013, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, described Mr. Snowden’s theft of documents as “an act of treason.” A former member of President Obama’s cabinet went even further, suggesting to me off the record in March this year that there are only three possible explanations for the Snowden heist: 1) It was a Russian espionage operation; 2) It was a Chinese espionage operation, or 3) It was a joint Sino-Russian operation.

Mr. Snowden’s critics regard the whistleblowing narrative as at best incomplete, at worst fodder for the naé¯ve. They do not believe that it explains the unprecedented size and complexity of the penetration of NSA files and records. For one thing, many of his critics have intelligence clearance. They have been privy to the results of an NSA investigation that established the chronology of the copying of 1.7 million documents that were stolen from the Signals Intelligence Center in Hawaii. The documents were taken from at least 24 supersecret compartments that stored them on computers, each of which required a password that a perpetrator had to steal or borrow, or forge an encryption key to bypass.

Once Mr. Snowden breached security at the Hawaii facility, in mid-April of 2013, he planted robotic programs called “spiders” to “scrape” specifically targeted documents. According to Gen. Dempsey, “The vast majority of those [stolen documents] were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures.”

Please read the whole thing.

[Hat tip: Scott Johnson at Powerline.]

[NOTE: From the very beginning of the Snowden saga I’ve been highly suspicious of him, his motives, his version of the story, and the timeline (see this).]

Tina Brown strikes a blow for the integrity of real journalists versus Matt Drudge

The New Neo Posted on by

Or something like that:

The Monica Lewinsky confessional in Vanity Fair brings back a torrent of unfond memories of the appalling cast of tabloid gargoyles who drove the scandal. Remember them? Treacherous thatched-roof-haired drag-queen Linda Tripp, with those dress-for-success shoulder pads? Cackling, fact-lacking hack Lucianne Goldberg, mealy-mouthed Pharisee Kenneth Starr””the whole buzzing swarm of legal, congressional and gossip industry flesh flies, feasting on the entrails. And, of course, hitting “send” on each new revelation that no one else would publish, the solitary, perfectly named Matt Drudge, operating in pallid obsession out of his sock-like apartment in Miami.

A once-in-a-lifetime cast! Or so we all thought. But what we didn’t know at the time is that they were not some passing cultural excrescence. They were the face of the future. The things that shocked us then””the illicitly taped conversations, the wholesale violations of elementary privacy, the globally broadcast sexual embarrassments, all the low-life disseminated malice””is now the communications industry as it operates every minute of every day.

Oh, the horror! says Brown, who cut her teeth on gossip as a wunderkind at Vanity Fair:

At Vanity Fair, Brown’s editorial philosophy was informed by two insights: first, that celebrities are intrinsically worth knowing about no matter what they’re like, and, second, that American celebrities take themselves very seriously. That means they must be praised with great earnestness or smeared with all available dirt, with the intensity due to people of their station.

I guess Brown doesn’t believe that Clinton was one of those who should have been “smeared with all available dirt”—after all, he was a Democrat, not a Republican. But there’s no doubt that if anyone was going to sling dirt on anyone, it should have been the lovely Brown rather than such unbeautiful “tabloid gargoyles” as the “thatched-roof-haired drag-queen” Tripp, the “cackling…hack” Goldberg, and “pallid” Drudge in his teeny-weeny apartment. The nerve of them, scooping a press that refused for political reasons to report on a big big story!

Brown alternates between sympathy for Monica Lewinsky and approbation, although she leans more to the sympathy side. That’s not surprising, since there are some interesting parallels between Brown’s and Lewinsky’s career, although the British Brown was tremendously much more successful with her own sexual escapades as a young woman. It helped that, at least for quite a while, she was also quite good at the publishing business, specializing in making cold properties hot. But it’s also the case that she got her start by being taken up in her early 20s by literary lights with whom she’d slept.

A tiny bit later on, one of them turned out to be the publisher of the British Sunday Times Harold Evans, who left his wife and three kids for Brown in the mid-70s. They married in 1981 and are still together, so their relationship seems to have stood the test of time, unlike that of the much-more-ill-fated Lewinsky and her married paramour. But at the beginning there were more parallels with Lewinsky than the mere fact that Brown had an affair with a married man: Evans was Brown’s powerful boss, and she was about twenty-five while he was about fifty years old. It’s not such a stretch to imagine that, when Brown writes, “Other women can often be the worst at cutting any slack towards the love interest in a sex scandal” she might be thinking of her own experience.

But there’s virtually no doubt at all that, for Brown, this represents something up close and personal:

The press was at the height of its power when the Monica story began and Drudge was its underbelly.

The ascendant media that looked down on him has been pretty much destroyed…

That too, is a story of humiliation. And not just hers.

That “ascendant media” of the time and its subsequent “humiliation” included Tina Brown. She’d been ascending for quite some time and her star has fallen in recent years, a fact for which she almost certainly blames Drudge and his low-life internet companions.

Should Lois Lerner be immunized?

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew C. McCarthy lays out the case for letting Lois Lerner off the prosecutor’s hook and putting her on the Congressional hearings’ hook by granting her immunity from prosecution for her testimony. Whether you believe that would be a good idea or not depends to a large extent on whether you think it’s more important to get her testimony or more important to send her to prison. In a perfectly just world, if she turns out to be guilty (and the evidence so far is that she is) then both would be nice. But we all know the world isn’t perfectly just, and so we may have to settle for either one or the other.

Or for neither, because if she’s not granted immunity she probably won’t be prosecuted either, since that would most likely be up to Eric Holder.

And so I’m with McCarthy on this, although reluctantly so because I’m one of those people who do care whether Lerner “ever sees the inside of a jail cell.” I just don’t think she ever will no matter what happens, so I’d settle for her testimony:

When officials prove unfit for government power, taking that power away is the highest public interest. Even if you’ve deluded yourself into thinking the Obama Justice Department would lift a finger to prosecute Lois Lerner, who cares if she ever sees the inside of a jail cell? What matters is laying bare the entirety of the scheme and finding out how high it goes: Who and what induced her to orchestrate the harassment of conservative groups? Why was the government’s fearsome tax agency placed in the service of the Democratic party’s political needs?

To get the answers to those questions, you need Ms. Lerner to testify. …

“But wait,” you say, “if we immunize her, we can’t prosecute her.” My first impulse is to say, “So what?” If she testifies truthfully and gives a full account of what happened, we’ll be a lot more interested in pursuing the officials who instigated the scheme than in prosecuting those who carried it out. But if “Who is going to jail!” is really your big concern, immunity for Ms. Lerner does not protect her if she lies or obstructs the investigation. The statute of limitations on such crimes will not have run out when a new administration takes over in 2017. She could still be prosecuted, and the penalties for those crimes are more severe than whatever her actions at the IRS could have earned her.

I also think that, even if “the scheme” for the IRS targeting of conservative groups didn’t originate with Lerner herself (which it may have; there’s a possibility she might have merely intuited that it would please the higher-ups and begun it on her own), she still isn’t likely to give us the names of those officials who did instigate it. I also doubt (although I could be very wrong about this) that the investigation will uncover any evidence in the form of emails and the like implicating those higher-ups, and that therefore learning their identities would rest on Lerner’s ratting on them. And then, if the effort to get her to spill the beans doesn’t succeed, and she’s been given immunity for testifying, there’s no one left to punish for what was probably the worst excess of IRS power in US history.

Another oldie but goodie

The New Neo Posted on by

Lesley Stahl interviews her mother. How old do you think her mother is?:

She’s 95. Astounding. What a lovely woman!

My mother, born a few years earlier than Ruthy Stahl, also called the refrigerator the icebox. And I, quite a few years younger than both, remember when most of our groceries were delivered to the house: fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, milk, and bread, all from different sources.

The bread came regularly; the milk likewise, left by the milkman in a little wooden box outside the kitchen door. The meat and fish my mother ordered over the telephone from the butcher and the fish guy. But the fruits and vegetables were the best, delivered by a man who came a couple of times a week in a large truck that was a traveling fruit and vegetable stand where you could go outside and see the display. One side could be lifted up, and underneath were open bins of fruits and vegetables like in a grocery store.

He’d come inside the house and sit down at the kitchen table and schmooze, telling us what was best that day and freshest in the fruit and vegetable line. He knew I loved red peppers, and in those days they weren’t always available, but he’d give me one as a special treat whenever they were. I still remember how good they tasted.

More Pinocchios for Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

Fact-checker Glenn Kessler at the WaPo says that Obama’s gone and lied again [emphasis mine]:

In addressing a dinner of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Los Angeles, President Obama made a rather striking claim ”” that Senate Republicans have filibustered “500 pieces of legislation that would help the middle class.”

Regular readers knows that The Fact Checker has objected to the way that Senate Democrats tally these figures, but the president’s claim makes little sense no matter how you do the numbers…

Indeed, when you go through the numbers, there have just been 133 successful filibusters ”” meaning a final vote could not take place ”” since 2007.

But, even if you accept the way Senate Democrats like to frame the issue, the president is still wrong. He referred to “legislation” ”” and most of these cloture motions concerned judicial and executive branch nominations. In the 113th Congress, for instance, 83 of the 136 cloture motions so far have concerned nominations, not legislation.

Even then, while Obama referred to “500 pieces of legislation,” the same bill can be subject to as many as three cloture motions, further inflating the numbers. For instance, there may be cloture to get on the bill, cloture on the substitute bill (if lawmakers are simply using an unrelated bill as a vehicle for passage), and cloture on the underlying bill. All of these votes might take place on the same day, but it creates the illusion of the same bill being “filibustered” three times. It certainly does not mean there were three pieces of legislation. So far in the 113th Congress, 36 pieces of legislation were subject to a cloture motion ”” and 12 were actually filibustered. That’s a far cry from the 136 that Obama is counting in order to tally up 500.

Obama’s count also includes at least a half-dozen instances when Republicans were blocked by Democrats through use of the filibuster. In fact, in the biggest oddity, the president reached back to 2007 in making his claim, so he includes two years when he was still a senator. On eight occasions, he voted against ending debate ”” the very thing he decried in his remarks.

Obama is no ordinary political liar. He’s an Orwellian political liar.

And even Kessler at the WaPo knows it:

On just about every level, this claim is ridiculous.

We realize that Senate rules are complex and difficult to understand, but the president did serve in the Senate and should be familiar with its terms and procedures. Looking at the numbers, he might have been able to make a case that Republicans have blocked about 50 bills that he had wanted passed, such as an increase in the minimum wage. But instead, he inflated the numbers to such an extent that he even included votes in which he, as senator, supported a filibuster.

The Times whips up its party’s fury

The New Neo Posted on by

A couple of days ago I wrote about a NY Times editorial that seemed on the surface to be critical of Obama’s foreign policy, but was really a cleverly crafted apologia for him. Make no mistake about it: the Times is abandoning neither President Obama nor its own devotion to leftism, although every now and then it must make a small concession to a smidgen of truth-telling just to keep up appearances.

But even that much must have been too much, because today the Times has come back with a full-throated expression of the meme du jour on the Benghazi Select Committee. In Bryan Preston’s words, today’s editorial “may be the most outrageous text to appear in the New York Times since Walter Duranty covered up the Soviet famine.”

I think that’s hyperbole. But not by all that much. And the Times editors are hardly alone; countless other politicians and pundits of the liberal and/or left persuasion have fastened on the idea that the GOP concern over Benghazi is a politically-motivated farce that’s beneath contempt:

When Jay Carney was grilled at length by Jonathan Karl of ABC News over an email outlining administration talking points in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, it was not, by the reckoning of many observers, the White House press secretary’s finest hour…But Carney needn’t have worried. He had plenty of backup.

He had The New Republic’s Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as “nonsense.” He had Slate’s David Weigel, along with The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog, debunking any claim that the new email was a “smoking gun.” Media Matters for America labeled Benghazi a “hoax.” Salon wrote that the GOP had a “demented Benghazi disease.” Daily Kos featured the headline: “Here’s Why the GOP Is Fired Up About Benghazi””and Here’s Why They’re Wrong.” The Huffington Post offered “Three Reasons Why Reviving Benghazi Is Stupid””for the GOP.”

The left must think this is a winning hand. Or perhaps it’s the only hand they’ve got. Or perhaps both. Will it work? Darned if I know, but it certainly seems to have worked beautifully so far with the rank-and-file, who are repeating the charges of “ridiculous” and worse in comment sections all around the MSM and the blogosphere.

But today’s Times’ editorial “Center Ring at the Republican Circus” is especially curious. It’s written in a style that is as juvenile and loaded with snark as a post on any blog, and that’s saying quite a bit. Take a look, for example, at the opening paragraph:

The hottest competition in Washington this week is among House Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court, also known as the Select House Committee to Inflate a Tragedy Into a Scandal. Half the House has asked to “serve” on the committee, which is understandable since it’s the perfect opportunity to avoid any real work while waving frantically to right-wing voters stomping their feet in the grandstand.

Now, I don’t read the Times every day, but I generally try to keep up with it, for reasons I’ve explained before: it’s still very influential, both with its readers and in setting the approach for other periodicals on the left. So perhaps this is the sort of tone the Times has come to adopt more and more in recent years. But to me there seems to be something different about this one, with the pureness of the propaganda coming through minus the sober gray-lady veneer.

The Times editors go on…and on. But I’ll just give you another example from paragraph two:

The day before, [House Republicans] voted to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official whom they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t.

So, why the juvenile, shrill, and snarky tone? I think the editors spill the beans on themselves in the very next paragraph, although of course, as is their wont, they ascribe their motives to their enemies instead:

Both actions stem from the same impulse: a need to rouse the most fervent anti-Obama wing of the party and keep it angry enough to deliver its donations and votes to Republicans in the November elections.

Just substitute the phrase “anti-Republican” for “anti-Obama” in that sentence, and then “Democrats” for “Republicans,” and you’ve got it. Another thing fueling the Times’ fury is that in the case of Benghazi it sees a threat not only to Obama but to Hillary in 2016. Whipping up hatred and contempt for Republicans is a tried-and-true method that worked in 2012 and could work again.

The last sentence of the Times editorial tips its hand once more:

Little nuisances like…basic facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way when House Republicans need to whip up their party’s fury.

Just substitute “Democrats” or “the editors of the NY Times” for “House Republicans” and you have exactly what’s happening here.

[NOTE: By the way, both the Benghazi Select Committee and the Lois Lerner contempt votes had some bipartisan support. But the only crossover votes were from Democrats who concurred with the Republicans. So, were they hateful Republican tools, too?

Here’s the Benghazi Select Committee vote roll call, and here are the roll calls on the Lois Lerner contempt charge and then for calling for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Note that there were 7 crossover Democratic votes for the first (Benghazi Committee), 6 for the second (Lerner contempt), but 26 for the third (IRS special counsel). There were no Republican crossover votes.]

Baffled By the Lyrics

The New Neo Posted on by

Surely you remember the Manfred Mann mid-70s hit “Blinded By the Light.” It’s a pretty nifty song, with an earworm-inducing hook.

But the rest of the lyrics are unintelligible. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s so catchy. But no, that second line is not “wrapped up like a douche”—although it sounds for all the world like the lead singer is saying exactly that:

The actual lyrics are here, but knowing them won’t help a lot in figuring out what the song is about. The song is about the song, that’s what it’s about.

But I didn’t know, until I did some research for this post, that it was written by Bruce Springsteen and performed by him on his very first studio album. When he sang it, that second line of the chorus was “cut loose” instead of “revved up.” His version didn’t just have a few different words, though, as you’ll see; the tone was very different, too. The same armature was there, but the clay he built up around it made a figure that’s almost unrecognizable.

This was back when Springsteen was considered a contender in the “who’s most like Bob Dylan?” sweepstakes:

Springsteen’s answer as to what the lyrics were about was, “the rhyming dictionary was on fire.”

[NOTE: Here’s a funny song by Loudon Wainwright III about what it was like to be one of those Bob Dylan clones, what he calls Dylan’s “dumbass kid brothers.” The verse in question starts at 1:23:

Some more trivia about “Blinded By the Light”—when former-Anita-Hill-bashing David Brock wrote his political right-to-left “change” book, he borrowed from the song to title it Blinded By the Right.]

As SOS, Hillary Clinton gave Boko Haram a pass

The New Neo Posted on by

Hillary Clinton had plenty of chances to condemn Boko Haram back when she was Secretary of State:

…[Clinton’s] own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the U.N. headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen senators and congressmen.

“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”

…Being placed on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations allows U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to use certain tools and authorities, including several found in the Patriot Act. The designation makes it illegal for any U.S. entities to do business with the group in question. It cuts off access to the U.S. financial system for the organization and anyone associating with it. And the designation also serves to stigmatize and isolate foreign organizations by encouraging other nations to take similar measures.

The State Department’s refusal to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization prevented U.S. law enforcement agencies from fully addressing the growing Boko Haram threat in those crucial two years, multiple GOP lawmakers told The Daily Beast.

So, why the refusal under Clinton? It doesn’t seem to have been a set-in-stone policy of the Obama administration, either, because when John Kerry became Secretary of State after Hillary, he finally did list Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. Republicans in Congress had written “letter after letter” urging Clinton to do it, and were joined by some Democrats as well, but she desisted.

Here’s the reason that’s being given:

In 2012, more than 20 prominent U.S. academics in African studies wrote to Clinton, urging her to not to label Bok Haram as a foreign terrorist organization. “An FTO designation would internationalize Boko Haram’s standing and enhance its status among radical organizations elsewhere,” the scholars said.

Inside the Clinton State Department, the most vocal official opposing designating Boko Haram was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, who served in that position from 2009 to 2013. Several officials said that the Nigerian government was opposed to the designation and Carson was focused on preserving the relationship between Washington and Abuja.

But that doesn’t make a lot of sense either. If giving Boko Haram the FTO designation would enhance it, wouldn’t that be true of practically any organization receiving such a designation? Then why do it at all, except for groups that are already hugely well-known and international in scope, such as al Qaeda?

And wasn’t the Nigerian government at least nominally fighting Boko Haram? So why would they oppose the designation?

To sum: what’s the point of an FTO designation if not for cases such as this one?

Some people think the failure was part of the Obama administration’s effort to give the impression that it had defeated terrorist groups like al Qaeda and that terrorism was much weakened (the same motivation for their role in the Benghazi debacle). But if so, why would Kerry act as he did in 2013? Was it because, now that the election of 2012 was over, the fiction no longer had to be maintained?

I confess that I’m somewhat puzzled by this whole timeline, but that’s the best explanation I can come up with.

[NOTE: I suppose it’s long past the time I should have added a “Hillary Clinton” category in the right sidebar, so I’m doing so now.]

Obama unleashes the left

The New Neo Posted on by

From Daniel Henninger today in the WSJ:

All of a sudden, the left has hit ramming speed across a broad swath of American life””in the universities, in politics and in government. People fingered as out of line with the far left’s increasingly bizarre claims are being hit and hit hard…

The trigger event was an agreement signed last May between the federal government and the University of Montana to resolve a Title IX dispute over a sexual-assault case.

Every college administrator in the U.S. knows about this agreement. Indeed, there are three separate, detailed “Montana” documents that were signed jointly””and this is unusual””by the civil-rights divisions of the Justice and Education Departments. Remarked DoJ’s Joceyln Samuels, “The government is stronger when we speak with one voice.”

That’s real muscle. But read the agreement. It is Orwellian.

The agreement orders the school to retain an “Equity Consultant” (yes, there is such a thing) to advise it indefinitely on compliance. The school must, with the equity consultant, conduct “annual climate surveys.” It will submit the results “to the United States.”

The agreement describes compliance in mind-numbing detail, but in fact the actual definitional world it creates is vague. It says: “The term ‘sexual harassment’ means unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” But there are also definitions for sexual assault and gender-based harassment. All of this detailed writ is called “guidance.” As in missile.

No constitutional lawyer could read this agreement and not see in it the mind of the Queen of Hearts: “Sentence first, verdict afterwards!” Indeed, the U.S. Education Department felt obliged to assert that the agreement is “entirely consistent with the First Amendment.”

First Amendment? It’s more like a fatwa. The Obama administration has issued a federal hunting license to deputize fanatics at any university in America. They will define who gets accused, and on what basis.

I agree that Obama has “unleashed” the forces of the left and empowered them. It’s the sort of thing I’ve been saying here for years. But the way was paved long before this; whatever is in the “Montana” agreements is only the latest step in a long process of preparation.

Read Allan Bloom on what happened at Cornell (and other universities) during the 60s—the failure of professors and administrators to defend freedom of speech on campus, and the caving to the special interests of aggrieved victim groups. Think about how American students have for decades been told that the definition of sexual harassment in the workplace or school is whatever might make them feel threatened or uncomfortable, and that speech that does this must be stamped out. Note the long long process of leftist professors hiring leftist professors to create a near-unanimity of leftist thought among faculty. And understand that this sort of PC thought-control and speech-control by the thought police has been normed so much and for so long that it’s likely that most students today see absolutely nothing wrong with it and don’t even understand the foundation of the arguments against it.

That the Obama DOJ has wormed itself ever more firmly into the process was inevitable. We are in big trouble, but we have been for a long, long time.

[ADDENDUM: And take a look at this.]

The boy she loves is a Romeo

The New Neo Posted on by

Want a break from politics? Let’s take a look at that 1965 song “Back in My Arms Again,” one of my favorites by the Supremes. Note how subtle and classy the sexuality of their performance is compared to today’s pop singers*:

One line from the song has always puzzled me. It occurs at minute 2:23, “And Flo, she don’t know, cause the boy she loves is a Romeo.”

What did that phrase mean? By the time I first heard the song, I’d already studied Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” in depth (in junior high, I might add). And so I knew that, at the beginning of the play, Romeo thinks he’s in love with Rosaline, and seems to be pining away for her. But then he spies Juliet at the dance, and declares, “”Did my heart love ’til now? Forswear it, sight / For I ne’er saw true beauty ’til this night.”

Once Romeo loves Juliet, that’s it for him. Although we don’t know if he would have remained faithful had they lived out their normal lifespans, in the context of the play Romeo’s love for Roseline versus his love for Juliet contrasts a love that’s superficial with a love that’s deep and true.

So Romeo is an exemplar of both kinds of love: superficial versus lasting. And when a person is called a “Romeo,” which is being referred to? Does the expression mean a dilettante with the ladies, a casual charmer who can’t be trusted? Or does it mean a true and faithful lover who cleaves to one person only?

Now, you might think I’m somewhat crazy to even give a moment’s thought to what the phrase might mean in the context of this song. All I can say is that I’ve been puzzled about it for well-nigh fifty years, and so I throw out the question to you.

Also, it gives me a chance to put a Supremes video up there.

I’m not making up the dilemma, though. The term “Romeo” when used to refer to a guy has an inherent double meaning, and the choice of which meaning applies can only be determined by the context:

You can describe a man as a Romeo if you want to indicate that he is very much in love with a woman, or that he frequently has sexual relationships with different women.

In Shakespeare’s play, Friar Laurence isn’t sure at first, either. He says it exceedingly well:

Romeo. Then plainly know my heart’s dear love is set
On the fair daughter of rich Capulet:
As mine on hers, so hers is set on mine;
And all combined, save what thou must combine
By holy marriage: when and where and how
We met, we woo’d and made exchange of vow,
I’ll tell thee as we pass; but this I pray,
That thou consent to marry us to-day.

Friar Laurence. Holy Saint Francis, what a change is here!
Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,
So soon forsaken? young men’s love then lies
Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
Jesu Maria, what a deal of brine
Hath wash’d thy sallow cheeks for Rosaline!
How much salt water thrown away in waste,
To season love, that of it doth not taste!
The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears,
Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears;
Lo, here upon thy cheek the stain doth sit
Of an old tear that is not wash’d off yet:
If e’er thou wast thyself and these woes thine,
Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline:
And art thou changed? pronounce this sentence then,
Women may fall, when there’s no strength in men.

Later in the scene Romeo convinces him (the “she” in the first line of the following exchange refers to Juliet; “the other” in the third line refers to Rosaline, as does Friar Laurence’s use of the word “she”):

Romeo. I pray thee, chide not; she whom I love now
Doth grace for grace and love for love allow;
The other did not so.

Friar Laurence. O, she knew well
Thy love did read by rote and could not spell.

In other words, Laurence recognizes that Romeo’s love for Rosaline wasn’t the real thing, and Rosaline recognized it too.

And every time I take a look at virtually any part of “Romeo and Juliet,” I am struck anew by what an extraordinary masterpiece it is.

[NOTE *: The classiness of the Supremes was no accident. It was a conscious plan:

The Supremes became the first black female performers of the rock era to embrace a more feminine image. Much of this was accomplished at the behest of Motown chief Berry Gordy and Maxine Powell, who ran Motown’s in-house finishing school and Artist Development department. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Ross sang in a thin, calm voice, and her vocal styling was matched by having all three women embellish their femininity instead of imitate the qualities of male groups. Eschewing plain appearances and basic dance routines, The Supremes appeared onstage in detailed make-up and high-fashion gowns and wigs, and performed graceful choreography created by Motown choreographer Cholly Atkins. Powell told the group to “be prepared to perform before kings and queens.” Gordy wanted the Supremes, like all of his performers, to be equally appealing to black and white audiences, and he sought to erase the image of black performers as being unrefined or lacking class.

It worked; the Supremes became the “the most commercially successful of Motown’s acts and are, to date, America’s most successful vocal group.” Not bad for three girls from the public housing projects of Detroit.]

[NOTE II: I think this post may have set a record for being indexed under the highest number of categories ever on the sidebar.]

Harry Reid’s war against the Kochs

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the latest installment in Harry Reid’s two minutes hate against the Koch Brothers:

Charles and David Koch are one of the “main causes” of climate change, charged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the Senate floor.

“While the Koch brothers admit to not being experts on the matter, these billionaire oil tycoons are certainly experts at contributing to climate change. That’s what they do very well. They are one of the main causes of this. Not a cause, one of the main causes,” Reid said.

You might ask how anyone can listen to and believe something that preposterous, something that obviously disconnected from reality or any scientific possibility, and yet simultaneously continue to believe him/herself to be a member of the party of both tolerance and scientific realism?

But that mind trick is performed almost effortlessly every day. Human beings have a vast capacity for self-deception and acceptance of propaganda, and demonizing the opposition is a tried-and-true method. After all, Alinsky’s Rule 12 was, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

But I can’t recall another politician at the level of Senate Majority Leader or higher using his/her position to attack private citizens like this before Obama came to office. It’s one of the things the Obama administration has perfected, encouraged, and unleashed, and it’s one of the most pernicious of its developments.

Scott Johnson wrote a post about Reid and the Kochs a few weeks ago, and that’s where I found this video demonstrating the relentless and repetitive nature of Reid’s anti-Koch campaign: