Biden impeachment hearings begin

The New Neo Posted on by

The Democrat line is that there is no evidence worth paying attention to – which seems to mean there is no notarized and witnessed contract Biden signed that states, “I accept this bribe in exchange for giving the following favors to the following country.”

Not quite the standard of proof they would use for Trump and his family, but no matter. Consistency is not required when you have the MSM in your corner.

Meanwhile, we have things like this:

Further notes on the anti-racism Canadian struggle session

The New Neo Posted on by

Have you ever read Shirley Jackson’s famous short story “The Lottery,” written in 1948? If you haven’t, SPOILER alert: the plot involves a tradition in a seemingly-normal town in which a person is chosen by lot to be stoned to death by the other residents. No reason is ever given. The process is merely described, in a narrative in which the Norman Rockwell-esque turns gradually into the horrific.

I’ve written two posts already about the struggle session atmosphere to which former Toronto school principal Richard Bilkszto was subjected during a 2021 anti-racism training session in Canada (see this and this). That’s what put me in mind of the Shirley Jackson story. Bilkszto ended up suing the Toronto School Board District for what happened during the session and afterwards at the Board’s hands, but shortly after the suit was filed he killed himself. It now seems more apparent to me, after reading some further articles on the subject, why the incident had such a devastating effect.

The first training session was just the beginning, although it was horrible. It was followed by some sources scrambling to show their own virtue by condemning Bilkszto, or protecting themselves from similar attack by fearfully keeping silent [emphasis mine]:

Bilkszto was particularly devastated by the fact that some of his TDSB bosses, whom he’d naively expected to defend him (or at least have the courtesy to say nothing at all), eagerly piled on with the public shaming meted out by their external DEI consultant.

On Twitter, Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini, then the TDSB’s Executive Superintendent, thanked Ojo-Thompson and her KOJO colleague for “modelling the discomfort [that] administrators” — i.e., Bilkszto — “may need to experience in order to disrupt ABR [anti-Black racism].”

For good measure, Robinson Petrazzini also suggested that Bilkszto (whom she did not name, but was the obvious subject of her Tweet) was allied with the forces of “resistance” to anti-racism, and so was abetting “harm to Black students and families.”

Bilkszto personally asked Robinson Petrazzini to delete the Tweet. She did so only eight months later, and only after receiving a letter from Bilkszto’s lawyer warning her that she’d be sued unless she did so.

According to Bilkszto, his other bosses also refused to support him, instead attacking him for his “male white privilege.” And yet, once Bilkszto filed a lawsuit against the TDSB, seeking $785,000 damages for the emotional and reputational harm he’d endured, those same administrators now began claiming that it was Ojo-Thompson who’d gone rogue.

I imagine it was especially disconcerting to Bilkszto to learn how fragile were the bonds he’d forged during his lengthy working life, how eager people he’d previously trusted were to distance themselves from him and throw a few stones themselves. When a community of colleagues appears to turn against a person or to be silent while he is persecuted, the experience generally has a powerful effect, adding betrayal to the original injury. As a liberal who may have continued up to that point to believe that the others shared his values, he probably experienced a very rude and shattering awakening.

Also, the insults launched against Bilkszto during the training session by Ojo-Thompson were even more extensive than reported in the other articles I’ve read prior to this. Here’s more of what is alleged to have been done [emphasis mine]:

“We [Canadians] are stepping on necks, we are kneeling on necks, we are Derek Chauvin-ing a whole group of people… Patriarchy is killing you, capitalism is killing you, and White supremacy is taking your soul, but what do I know?” Thompson said, according to a complaint obtained by Fox News Digital.

Ojo-Thompson proceeded to call Canada “the bastion of White supremacy and colonialism,” according to the suit. …

“I am telling you what the facts are and the truth is,” Ojo-Thompson said, while claiming Canada was worse than the U.S. in regard to embedded “White supremacy,” according to the suit.

After Bilkszto interjected, disagreeing with Ojo-Thompson in her assessment that Canada was more racist than the U.S., he was promptly reprimanded for his “Whiteness,” according to the suit.

“This is why we are in the place we are in. We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your Whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people? Is that what you are doing? I think that’s what you’re doing,” Ojo-Thompson said, according to the suit.

Another trainer at KOJO, interjected, claiming Bilkszto was an “apologist” for racism, in front of all his administrative peers, according to the suit. Bilkszto’s superiors and colleagues did not intervene when the alleged racial comments against his “Whiteness” were made.

Ojo-Thompson proceeded “to publicly humiliate Bilkszto and make an example of him,” going so far as to liken him to a “‘weed’ that needed to be cut down,” the lawsuit said.

So we have the leader, Ojo-Thompson, taking an aggressive tone and setting Bilkszto up as the white male villain. As is common in these trainings, any argument or attempt to defend oneself is labeled as more racism. This was done in a public work setting in front of peers, and as far as I can tell, Bilkszto was the only person who objected and the only person so treated. And then his colleagues – whom he almost certainly had previously considered friends – were silent, probably afraid that they would be the next victims and that Ojo-Thompson and her associate would get out that weed-whacker and use it on them. So he was the designated sacrificial lamb who would save the group from condemnation.

It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to that sort of tyranny and expose oneself to the possibility of such an attack, especially in the workplace where the consequences can be serious and financial. Most people will not do it.

But that wasn’t all that happened to Bilkszto. There were other professional consequences, and a further struggle session where Bilkszto was targeted again as well as mocked [emphasis mine]:

Bilkszto was then called in for professional reprimand in relation to his ideological disagreement with Ojo-Thompson. When Bilkszto attended the next KOJO training, Ojo-Thompson attacked him again unprompted, while laughing at one point, according to the suit.

“This is the operation of White supremacy and you [the audience of colleagues, that is] saw it with your own eyes,” Ojo-Thompson said, according to the lawsuit.

“It doesn’t get better than this,” Ojo-Thomson said about Bilkszto’s interruption, per the suit.

“It is rare that when teaching something that you actually get a real life of the concept unfolding right before everyone’s eyes and ears, and we had that privilege last week, so I want to open by going back to the concept of resistance,” Ojo-Thomson said, according to the suit.

“One of the ways that White supremacy is upheld… is through resistance and like I said, as I began to speak earlier we had, I am so lucky [*laughs*], who would have thought my luck would have showed up so well last week, that we got perfect evidence of a wonderful example of resistance that all of you got to bear witness to, and we are going to talk about it, because it doesn’t get better than this,” she continued, according to the suit.

Power and sadism and racism from Ojo-Thompson, and no one in the audience willing to stand up and call it what it was.

Here is a short bio of Ojo-Thompson. And here you can find even more details of her remarks to Bilkszto, including a series of audio clips of some of the exchanges at the trainings.

Also, some later remarks Bilkszto made about his own life:

“To me, being gay is a part of me,” Bilkszto said in the interview. “It’s not my identity. It’s not something I choose to put out there all the time. As a matter of fact, if people were having a conversation about, you know, ‘I don’t think there should be gay marriage,’ I’m not even offended by that if people are making rational arguments—as long as they’re not being homophobic.”

He added: “It’s about the whole cancelling and not allowing for free speech, free debate, and all those types of things. I’m a big free speech proponent.” Bilkszto said he thought Chris Rufo, the conservative activist who built his online following by spotlighting the excesses of wokeness, was spot on.

Sounds like a very reasonable guy. Bilkszto apparently had a loving family, and had previously been highly respected in his job.

While it’s certainly true that not everyone would have committed suicide in the face of this kind of pressure, the stress was formidable. I am convinced that, but for the chain of events that was set in motion by the training, Bilkszto would be alive today.

NOTE: You can read the entire story “The Lottery” here. It’s quite short.

On last night’s debate

The New Neo Posted on by

No, I didn’t watch it. I don’t like political debates even when they’re handled fairly well, and I knew this one wouldn’t be handled well. It was destined to be a shouting match with stupid gotcha questions, and from the descriptions I’ve read, that’s pretty much what it turned out to be.

That sort of thing makes everyone look bad – the candidates, the station, the moderators, and the party leaders who agreed to the format. Why oh why do something that self-destructive?

Stephen Kruiser has a theory, and it’s not a bad one:

The big question then is: Why is the GOP still letting this crap happen?

Let’s look at that. This is all GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s doing. The woman with perhaps the worst track record of any GOP chair in history. The party has hemorrhaged governorships and seats in Congress since she’s been in charge.

Who was her most prominent supporter when she was running for a fourth term after presiding over three elections that were unmitigated disasters for the GOP?

Oh yeah, Donald Trump.

At this point, I’m beginning to think that this is all by design. Trump and McDaniel struck a deal: he’d help her reelection bid; she’d set up some of the worst debates in GOP primary history and he’d avoid them. Yes, I believe that he would be opting out even if he didn’t have a big lead in the polls.

This way, the other candidates can endure the pontificating and inane questions from the moderators, none of which will make them look good, and Trump can hit the tanning bed, unscathed.

It surprised me when Trump endorsed McDaniel. It surprised me when she was re-elected. I think her chairmanship has been a disaster.

No one can look good in these debates; they are debasing experiences.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) About that wire transfer to Joe Biden’s address in 2019.

(2) Kevin McCarthy is demanding border control prior to passing a continuing resolution:

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is going all-in on border issues as he takes a second shot this week at passing a GOP-only short-term funding bill that would pair an extension of government funding with a swath of border policy changes.

McCarthy is racing against a competing continuing resolution (CR) unveiled in the Senate on Tuesday and a Saturday government shutdown deadline. …

In addition to the border measures, McCarthy said the bill would also cut discretionary funding for duration of a CR to a top-line spending level of $1.471 trillion — the number from the House GOP’s “Limit, Save, Grow” partisan debt limit bill from earlier this year that was consistent with fiscal 2022 levels. Republicans in a conference meeting last week also discussed creating a commission to examine the national debt.

(3) William Jacobson on the Trump fraud decision. From a comment there:

Lenders are responsible for doing their own due diligence. The idea that an owner can just make up a number and a lender accepts it at face value is laughable.

Basically, this court is declaring all negotiations to be illegal, since there is only one fair price and any discussions of prices other than the one true fair price are fraud.

This is crazy.

(4) Andrew C. McCarthy writes about Hunter Biden’s suit claiming that Giuliani “hacked” his hard drive:

It used to be that Hunter, while caviling about the invasion of his privacy, would not admit that the infamous laptop data actually belonged to him.

Now, in his latest round of vexatious litigation — this time, a lawsuit against 2020 Trump campaign lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as well as Robert Costello, Giuliani’s former lawyer and fellow former federal prosecutor — Team Biden’s position is marginally less incoherent. …

While acknowledging that the data is his, the ne’er-do-well first son does not admit — though, cutely, does not deny — that he gave Delaware computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac the infamous laptop from hell on which the information was stored.

Why play this silly game? Because Hunter’s lawsuits risibly allege that his stored digital information was hacked — if not by the Russians, then by Mac Isaac, Giuliani, Costello, former Trump aide Steve Bannon, and who knows who else.

Implicit in the concept of hacking — computer theft — is that access to data was obtained without the owner’s permission.

Hence, if Hunter admits that he brought a damaged laptop to Mac Isaac, with the precise understanding that Mac Isaac would gain access to its data for purposes of extraction and preservation, then it becomes numbingly obvious that the stored digital information was not hacked.

(5) Biden made a cameo appearance on the UAW picket line.

The Biden documents investigation and differential treatment

The New Neo Posted on by

They’re investigating Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents:

The federal investigation into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents prior to becoming president has grown into a sprawling examination of Obama-era security protocols and internal White House processes, with investigators so far interviewing scores of witnesses, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.

Federal prosecutors and FBI agents from special counsel Robert Hur’s office have been interviewing witnesses for nearly nine months, targeting an expansive constellation of former aides — from high-level advisers to executive assistants and at least one White House attorney. Several sources estimated that as many as 100 witnesses have already been interviewed, with interviews conducted as recently as last week and some witnesses asked to return for follow-up interviews.

That’s an ABC story, and note the language. I used the term “mishandling,” but they use the even less pejorative term “handling.” The message in those paragraphs is not only to norm what happened, but also to give the impression that any investigation will be mega-thorough and extremely dogged in its pursuit of the truth. Cynics among us (and that’s most of us) don’t quite buy it.

Next paragraph:

Sources who were present for some of the interviews, including witnesses, told ABC News that authorities had apparently uncovered instances of carelessness from Biden’s vice presidency, but that — based on what was said in the interviews — it seemed to them that the improper removal of classified documents from Biden’s office when he left the White House in 2017 was more likely a mistake than a criminal act.

Is anyone surprised at this basically foreordained conclusion?

The rest of the article goes on and on about how thorough the investigation is, and then contrasts the cooperation of the Biden forces with authorities versus Trump’s alleged lack of cooperation. Unless I missed it, there is no discussion of the difference between a Vice President or senator – Biden at the time the documents were taken – having such documents, versus a president (Trump) possessing them.

There’s also this:

[Special counsel] Hur has vowed to conduct a “fair, impartial, and dispassionate” investigation, following the facts “thoroughly” and “without fear or favor.”

So now we all believe that’s the way it has been and will be, right?

Democrats will contend it is so. The right believes the opposite. But it’s the people in the middle who interest me. I can’t help but wonder whether many of them will see the disparity in treatment and agree that Trump is being persecuted and Biden let off easy. That could end up being reflected at the ballot box in 2024, because I think there still are many Americans who do believe in equal justice, and don’t see it happening these days.

I guess Michelle Obama must be a riveting speaker …

The New Neo Posted on by

… if she’s in fact making close to $750K for a one-hour speech, as reported in this article:

The 59-year-old former lawyer spoke to an estimated 5,000 attendees on how to “push past self-doubt while discussing the importance of inclusivity and diversity” at the annual Bits and Pretzels forum in Munich — a start-up event held on the sidelines of the annual Oktoberfest beer festival, according to the event website.

For her speech, Obama was paid 700,000 euros, which is roughly equivalent to $741,000, two unidentified sources close to the conference organizers told the Daily Mail.

Organizers told the outlet that the former first lady “topped the list” of people whom participants wanted to hear from “year after year.”

That comes out to be $12,350 per minute, and about $206 per second.

No doubt the speech was Churchillian.

These sorts of fees are one of the reasons politics is so corrupt these days – or one of the ways in which it’s so corrupt. And Michelle Obama isn’t even a politician – yet. Some say she will end up as the Democrats’ nominee in 2024. I have my doubts.

“Anti-racism” trainings and suicide

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “huxley” observes, first quoting commenter “Irish Otter49” in a discussion of the man who committed suicide after being insulted in an anti-racism training mandated by his employer:

“So he took his own life because he couldn’t deal with harsh words from a stupid female woke black race hustler? Very sad.”

IrishOtter49:

Well, yes. I believe I’m with you.

I rather dislike the anti-racism folks, but if someone imputes that I am a white supremacist, or really any other smear, it’s on me if I kill myself.

Maybe lawfare in this case is good tactics, but in the long run it reinforces the woke “hate speech” strategy which works against conservatives and the Constitution.

The thing is, this is not a case of a random person coming up to someone and calling him a name. This was done by a person whose business it is to do this as a professional hired by another business which is an employer. As far as I can tell, the training is mandatory and therefore a condition of the job. According to this article, it can render the targeted person “unemployable” and cause the person to be ostracized.

Nor does it ordinarily involve a simple nasty comment. In my post on the subject, when I described these trainings as “struggle sessions,” I was being only somewhat hyperbolic. They are actually forms of brainwashing meant to break a person down psychologically and then reconstruct that person’s value system in order to get the person to see the world – and himself or herself – differently and with guilt and remorse (if white) or blaming others (if black). They are public humiliations in front of colleagues, as well, and the trainers have methods of invalidating all attempts by the target at self-defense, labeling them racist no matter what the person says in his or her own defense.

There is no way out except for the very strongest among us. People on the right are probably more resistant, for the simple reason that they don’t already buy into the premises. But people on the left or even in the middle are very vulnerable. You might think you could shake it off quite easily, and perhaps you could. But don’t be so sure, unless you’ve undergone something similar and been able to emerge intact.

When I was quite young, about twelve or so, I read a book entitled The Rape of the Mind (yes; I seem to have had an early interest in the topic). It was about brainwashing. Orwell also gives an account of brainwashing, helped by torture, in his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith resists, but in the end he’s a broken man who loves Big Brother.

I’m not saying an anti-racism training is the equivalent of imprisonment and torture; it is not. But you might be surprised at how destructive and effective and relentless the pressure can be, especially to someone with a tendency to any sort of self-doubt or conscience. Group pressure is an especially powerful tool.

This is from the book’s description at Amazon:

In The Rape of the Mind [the author, Meerlo] goes far beyond the direct military implications of mental torture to describing how our own culture unobtrusively shows symptoms of pressurizing people’s minds. He presents a systematic analysis of the methods of brainwashing and mental torture and coercion, and shows how totalitarian strategy, with its use of mass psychology, leads to systematized “rape of the mind.” He describes the new age of cold war with its mental terror, verbocracy, and semantic fog, the use of fear as a tool of mass submission and the problem of treason and loyalty, so loaded with dangerous confusion.

The first chapter is called “You Too Would Confess.”

What does Meerlo mean by “verbocracy”? This:

Propagandistic lies and catchphrases are an inexorable feature of totalitarianism. Repeated countless times from countless angles, the effect is to drill the desired thinking until accepted as truth. “Double talk” characterizes much of the narrative, with words like “freedom” redefined to support the lies. Words become emotional triggers and conditioners instead of sources of independent thought.

In such a training, the idea that white people are all guilty of some sort of white original sin that cannot be expunged or denied but only accepted and atoned for, and that black people are always the innocent victims, is a big part of this. The more the white person mounts a defense, the more guilty and anti anti-racist (therefore, racist) the person is deemed to be. It is an intense and sophisticated psychological public pressure that taps into a highly emotional element of people in America today: their attitudes towards race and the racial history of the country.

Hunter Biden sues Giuliani for “hacking” the laptop hard drive that isn’t Hunter’s except when it is

The New Neo Posted on by

Have I got this right?:

The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California states Giuliani is “primarily responsible” for the “total annihilation” of Biden’s digital privacy. It also names Robert Costello, a former federal prosecutor who previously represented Giuliani, as a defendant, Fox News has confirmed.

“For the past many months and even years, Defendants have dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy toward looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen from Plaintiff’s devices or storage platforms, including what Defendants claim to have obtained from Plaintiff’s alleged ‘laptop’ computer,” Biden’s attorneys wrote in the complaint, claiming that the data was not even from a “laptop,” but from an “external drive.”

More here:

An independent analysis, by two cyber investigators from Minneapolis-based Computer Forensics Services, found no evidence that the user data had been modified, fabricated or tampered with. But some versions of the hard drive circulated later appeared to have had data added after April 2019, a sign they could have been tampered with, according to reports in other media outlets, including The Washington Post.

The lawsuit is the latest move in a monthslong effort by Hunter Biden’s legal team to aggressively push back against his Republican antagonizers.

Poor Hunter! Bullied by those mean Republicans.

RIP David McCallum

The New Neo Posted on by

David McCallum was one of my favorite actors when I was young. I only saw him in two things, but I loved him in both. I’m not sure I could explain why, either. I found his blond looks exotic and attractive, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough. He was an understated actor, but I was very drawn to him.

The first role was in the TV show “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”:

I had forgotten that Leo G. Carroll – aka “Cosmo Topper” – was in that show.

I was hardly alone in my adolescent crush on McCallum:

The Man from U.N.C.L.E., intended as a vehicle for Robert Vaughn, made McCallum into a sex symbol, his Beatle-style blond haircut providing a trendy contrast to Vaughn’s clean-cut appearance. McCallum’s role as the mysterious Russian agent Illya Kuryakin was originally conceived as a peripheral one. McCallum, however, took the opportunity to construct a complex character whose appeal rested largely in what was shadowy and enigmatic about him. Kuryakin’s popularity with the audience as well as Vaughn and McCallum’s on-screen chemistry were quickly recognized by the producers, and McCallum was elevated to co-star status.

Although the show aired at the height of the Cold War, McCallum’s Russian alter ego became a pop culture phenomenon. The actor was inundated with fan letters, and a Beatles-like frenzy followed him everywhere he went.

The second of McCallum’s early roles that I well remember was the character Ashley-Pitt in one of my all-time favorite movies, The Great Escape (1963). I saw the film in a movie theater when it first came out. I was a youngish teenager and was expecting an adventure story with a happy ending. I got something quite different and far more moving and tragic, as well as humorous at many points. Lots of male pulchritude, too.

For this post I was looking for a particular clip of McCallum – anyone who knows the movie probably recalls the scene I mean, which takes place at a train station after the escape. I couldn’t find it, so the following one will have to do. It’s brief. His role wasn’t a huge one, but he made a deep impression on me nevertheless:

Apparently, McCallum was a nice guy and a family man:

His son Peter made a statement on behalf of his family, saying, “He was the kindest, coolest, most patient and loving father. He always put family before self. …

“He was a true renaissance man — he was fascinated by science and culture and would turn those passions into knowledge. For example, he was capable of conducting a symphony orchestra and (if needed) could actually perform an autopsy, based on his decades-long studies for his role on NCIS.

“After returning from the hospital to their apartment, I asked my mother if she was OK before she went to sleep. Her answer was simply, “Yes. But I do wish we had had a chance to grow old together.” She is 79, and dad just turned 90. The honesty in that emotion shows how vibrant their beautiful relationship and daily lives were, and that somehow, even at 90, Daddy never grew old.”

He lived to be 90; not a bad run. He kept on acting, explaining that he was doing what he loved and what he was born to do. What a blessing.