Reasonable doubt?

The New Neo Posted on by

The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman “narrative” keeps shape-shifting. Ferreting out the truth at this point seems pretty much impossible, but it needs to be attempted.

The trial will disclose much more. That’s part of what trials are for, although the truth can often remain a very, very difficult quarry in a situation in which intents and perceptions are important, and there are no witnesses (or very few good ones) to the initial confrontation and the crucial events surrounding it. Forensics can help, of course, but they can’t tell us everything we need to know.

Take this set of facts:

One of those inconsistencies [between Zimmerman’s story and the evidence]: Zimmerman told police Trayvon had his hand over Zimmerman’s mouth during their fight on the night he shot Trayvon.

The Sentinel’s source confirmed that Zimmerman’s statements include that allegation. But authorities do not believe that happened, the source told the Sentinel, because on one 911 call, someone can be heard screaming for help. If it were Zimmerman, as he claims, his cries were not muffled, the source said.

And this commentary by the Martin family attorney:

Reached in Birmingham, Ala., Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump said Thursday that Zimmerman’s claim that he was screaming in the 911 call and that his mouth was covered by the teen don’t add up.

“[Trayvon’s father] Tracy Martin told me that that’s what [police] told him,” Crump said, of Zimmerman making those statements to police.

“It’s either one or the other, it can’t be both,” Crump said.

Of course it can be both. It’s hard to cover a person’s mouth effectively while fighting without taking your hand off his mouth once in a while. Why couldn’t the screams have occurred during such an interval or intervals?

These are just small details, but I mention them to illustrate the larger point of how a case like this, aired in the MSM, is mostly garbage in, garbage out at this stage. But that doesn’t stop the partisans from making propaganda galore out of rumor and logic based on incomplete information. And how many people will ever learn otherwise? Don’t first impressions count an awful lot in these things?

Other news today brought home the same idea. Remember Dominique Strauss-Kahn? First a rapist, then a mere purveyor of paid quickie sex (or not-sex, in the Clintonian sense)? In France, rather than New York, the allegations keep flying and the legal battles go on, but not about the Sofitel incident. Read this is you’re interested, but don’t say I didn’t warn you; it’s not exactly family fare.

It’s not in any real dispute any more that Strauss-Kahn likes to have paid sex in hotels, sometimes in a twosome and sometimes in groups. Even that much information gives a picture of the man that makes John Edwards look like an old-fashioned romantic. But is Strauss-Kahn a rapist, or are the new accusers just piling on, as it were? There is no way to know yet; your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps if I sat in the courtroom for the entire trial and heard all the evidence (with a translator!) I might come to a pretty strong conclusion. But I don’t think that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is good enough.

And then there’s someone like Herman Cain. Remember him? He’s been awfully quiet lately, and the allegations against him have just faded away. When they were big news, I wrote about the issue at some length, and came to the conclusion that…that…we don’t know, although the accusers had serious credibility problems.

Jurors in a courtroom are told to weigh the evidence and to only find a defendant guilty if culpability is established beyond a reasonable doubt. But the “reasonable doubt” standard is really a judgment call, and is not amenable to strict definitions, although definitions are certainly attempted:

The standard that must be met by the prosecution’s evidence in a criminal prosecution: that no other logical explanation can be derived from the facts except that the defendant committed the crime, thereby overcoming the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

If the jurors or judge have no doubt as to the defendant’s guilt, or if their only doubts are unreasonable doubts, then the prosecutor has proven the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and the defendant should be pronounced guilty.

The term connotes that evidence establishes a particular point to a moral certainty and that it is beyond dispute that any reasonable alternative is possible. It does not mean that no doubt exists as to the accused’s guilt, but only that no Reasonable Doubt is possible from the evidence presented.

But anyone who follows trials and verdicts knows that the standard isn’t always applied that way; sometimes logical and possible alternative explanations are rejected as improbable, based on jurors’ hunches. In practice, isn’t “reasonable” really what any individual juror feels it to be? And don’t we all tend to think that we are the reasonable ones?

Have trouble getting to sleep?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t usually push products, but this is one I’ve been addicted to for over thirty years.

You’ve probably seen and maybe even heard all those newer and fancier sound machines that are supposed to lull you to sleep. They’re digital, and they feature gushing waterfalls and ocean waves and chirping crickets and other sounds that are purported to soothe you into dreamland. But all their sounds have a tinny quality to my ear, an unnaturalness that the old tried and true “Sleepmate” lacks.

I’ve learned there are two types of people in the world: those who want absolute quiet when they sleep, and those who prefer low and monotonous sound, especially if they need to mask the snoring of a loved one or the sirens of city traffic, or even the spring peepers in the country (a sound I happen to love, but not for sleeping).

The “dangerous” new Obama book

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s the headline of this Politico piece: “The dangerous new Obama book,” referring to David Maraniss’s new biography of Obama, which I discussed here yesterday.

Dangerous? Pul-eeze. The entire Politico article is laughable:

The product of [Maraniss’s] big dig, “Barack Obama: The Story,” seems to be a nuanced, even sympathetic portrayal culled from people who still admire Obama. Yet, make no mistake, this is a dangerous book for Obama, and White House staffers have been fretting about it in a low-grade way for a long, long time ”” in part because it could redefine the self-portrait Obama skillfully created for himself in 1995 with “Dreams from My Father.”

The success of “Dreams” has given Obama nearly complete control of his own life narrative, an appealing tale that has been the foundation of his political success. But Maraniss’s biography threatens that narrative by questioning it: Was Obama’s journey entirely spiritual and intellectual? Or was it also grounded in the lower realms of ambition and calculation?

Do you mean that Obama was actually ambitious? That he thought about his political career and even did some planning? That his head wasn’t in the clouds as he just tried to be all that he could be, spiritually, morally, intellectually?

Does anyone believe this sort of claptrap? Even those who still adore the guy? It’s funny how the premise of the Politico piece fits into the point I made at the end of my earlier post from today, which has to do with the Alice Palmer incident:

[What Obama did to Alice Palmer] was nasty, it was ruthless, it occurred at the beginning of Obama’s career when he was supposedly untested and relatively naive””and he got away with it, because most people haven’t a clue that it occurred, or what it revealed about his most-definitely-not-a-nice-guy character.

Anyone who has studied the bare facts of Obama’s political career—and that must include the folks at Politico—has to have become aware of the fact that Obama was one of the coldest and most calculating politicians right from the get-go. If you’re still unfamiliar with what happened, take a look. This story has been in the public domain for a long, long time, and anyone ignorant of it or unaware of what it indicates is either so negligent that he/she shouldn’t be writing political columns, or is lying.

I discovered the Alice Palmer story quite early on in the 2008 campaign. The incident occurred in 1995 and has never been a secret. Just imagine if George Bush or Mitt Romney had done something similar. Do you think for one minute that the American public wouldn’t be reminded of it over and over, ad nauseum?

Obama and the brag/slam routine

The New Neo Posted on by

Two days ago I wrote a post about Obama’s and his campaign ads’ bragging about the killing of Bin Laden and insinuating that Romney would never have done it. Towards the end of the post I wrote, “I’m not sure why this particular episode has galled me so much.”

But today, on reading this piece, I had an insight that helped me understand the reason: it’s the fact that it’s a four-pronged assault. There isn’t just one outrage, there are four:

(1) the bragging, which is unpresidential and unworthy of someone with true valor

(2) the hypocrisy of using the incident for campaign points, after criticizing others for doing so

(3) the misrepresentation of what Romney had actually said, with carefully- and mendaciously-truncated quotes

(4) the fact that despite all this, so many voters still consider Obama above the political fray.

Obama has always been audacious, all right, and so far he’s always gotten away with it. That’s one of the reasons why the Alice Palmer incident galls me so. It was nasty, it was ruthless, it occurred at the beginning of Obama’s career when he was supposedly untested and relatively naive—and he got away with it, because most people haven’t a clue that it occurred, or what it revealed about his most-definitely-not-a-nice-guy character.

Dancing With the Stars update

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s what you really want, isn’t it? For me to leave behind all the tedious blather about Obama, and offer some tedious blather about “Dancing With the Stars” instead?

So let me just say that I’m sad today because the guy who was in some ways (not all ways!) my favorite contestant this season, Jaleel White, was voted off last night in a travesty of justice. I already wrote about Jaleel and offered some videos here and here, in the “Vote for Obama, he’s cool” thread.

You may or may not remember White as the quintessentially nerdy character Urkel in the popular TV show of the late 80s through 90s, “Family Matters.” When he began the role he was 12 years old and it was only supposed to be a one-shot deal, but the series went on for 9 years and Urkel was its most popular character, although by the time it was done White found himself typecast as a nerd.

That doesn’t mean he couldn’t dance, though, even back then. Unfortunately, the full video of the Urkel Dance can’t be embedded (I assume for copyright reasons), but you can watch it here. Here’s a partial version:

And now, White’s still dancing, although it’s not quite the Urkel dance:

Mock me if you life, but DWTS is one of my favorite guilty pleasures. I appreciate how hard this sort of dancing is for amateurs, much much harder (and more exhausting) than it looks.

Obama the boyfriend

The New Neo Posted on by

Although I’m heartily sick of the topic of Barack Obama right now, I can’t quite ignore this piece about Obama’s college and immediate post-college years, as seen through the eyes of his girlfriends and the love letters they saved (or perhaps I should say “correspondence”), and the journal entries they turned over to David Maraniss, author of a new biography of Obama that has just been excerpted in Vanity Fair.

I only skimmed the piece, which is long and not really all that interesting. But I read enough to say the following:

Assuming that the letters and other writings are authentic—and I have no reason to doubt that at the moment—we can say that Obama was a not-atypical bright young guy who wrote pretentiously about Literature and Life and Love in classic student style. We can also say that he’s clearly heterosexual, and that much of his personality back then seems very familiar to those who study him now. The coolness, the distance, the sense of someone behind a veil and profoundly unknowable, were already evident even to the women who got closest to him.

I also think it’s interesting to compare and contrast Obama with Romney at approximately the same age. They were almost opposites. Obama was still searching for a father and an identity; Romney had an unusually strong dose of both. Obama was drifting; Romney was a family man who already was married with children and focused on his future (Romney married at 22 and became a father at 23). Obama smoked and drank, and more; Romney was a teetotaler and non-smoker. And yet they both were the products of similar educations: private prep schools and Harvard Law (and in Romney’s case, Harvard Business as well).

Obama the hypothetical president

The New Neo Posted on by

David Harsanyi makes some excellent points here about one of Obama’s favorite methods: comparing what he’s done as president with what others might have done, or what might have happened without him.

The economy? May be bad, but just think how much worse it would have been without Obama the Great.

Obama Bin Laden? Wimpy Romney would never have killed him.

This particular approach was Obama’s m.o. from the start. Remember how much and how often we’d hear about the mess he inherited from his predecessor? It was the preparation for this “could be much worse” technique.

As with quite a few things Obama does, I think this is unprecedented in a president, left or right, Democrat or Republican. If any previous president in my lifetime has used this technique with any regularity (or even at all), I simply don’t recall it. There is an immaturity and a lack of the ability to take responsibility in Obama that is really quite astounding, and I think it’s sincere and goes down very deep (if it’s appropriate to use the word “deep” for something so shallow):

Thanks

The New Neo Posted on by

I want to offer an extra and very heartfelt thank-you to all of you readers who have continued to use my blog as their portal to buying stuff from Amazon. The orders keep dribbling in—at a slower pace than over the Christmas holidays, it’s true; but still, it adds up over time. So don’t think any item is too small to bother with. I know it’s hard to remember to do it, but I deeply appreciate every single effort.

I never know who you are, by the way, because only the items and the amounts come through, not names. But it’s wonderful to see.

Also, every now and then a Paypal donation comes in, even when I’m not having a campaign to pass the hat. That’s wonderful to see too!

Obama: boasts and innuendos

The New Neo Posted on by

I know that there are plenty of braggarts and liars in politics, especially among so-called “surrogates”–i.e. advisors, campaign managers, official advertisements, PAC advertisements, supporters, and the like. And vice-presidents; perhaps especially vice presidents.

But I’ve never seen—or at least cannot remember—a sitting president sinking quite as low as Obama regularly does these days while campaigning (which is what seems to occupy an enormous amount of his time and energy). And he doesn’t need surrogates; he does it himself, bragging on his exploits and lying—usually in a very subtle manner, by innuendo rather than direct accusation—about his opponents.

What’s got me going this time? The “Mitt-Romney-wouldn’t-have-killed-Bin-Laden-like-I-did” meme that the Obama campaign’s been spouting off on lately.

The first problem is that it’s hypocritical, because Obama has criticized opponents for using this sort of thing for campaign purposes:

This is the same President who once criticized Hillary Clinton for invoking bin Laden ”˜to score political points.’

This is the same President who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn’t ”˜spike the ball’ after the touchdown. And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected.

So, what did Obama actually say yesterday? Try this on for size; it was the president’s answer to a press conference question in which a reporter specifically asked about the controversy, mentioning Romney by name:

“I’d just recommend that everybody take a look at people’s previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and take out Bin Laden.”

“I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. That’s been at least my practice,” Obama said from the East Room of the White House, during a joint news conference with Japan’s prime minister. “I said that I’d go after Bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did. If there are others who have said one thing and now suggest they’d do something else, then I’d go ahead and let them explain it.”

A particular pet peeve of mine is the use the weasel word “people” when the speaker actually means someone quite specific. In this case it’s undoubtedly Romney to whom Obama is referring, as is clear from the context. Here’s the video for that:

Obama knows that Romney will try to “go ahead and explain it,” but that most people won’t be listening to him. But here, for those who are paying attention, is what Romney said. He’s done plenty of ‘splaining already:

If you missed the origin of this controversy, it comes from an Obama campaign commercial that heaps credit on Obama for Seal Team Six’s raid on Obama’s house, and suggests that Romney wouldn’t have authorized the mission. The Romney quote is, “It’s not worth moving heaven and Earth, spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” Of course, Romney didn’t say what Obama now claims he did”“that, if we knew bin Laden’s whereabouts and were prepared to kill him, Romney would decline to authorize the mission. Within a few days after the speech from which the quoted sentence came, Romney was asked about it in a presidential debate:

Romney: Thank you. Of course we get Osama bin Laden and track him wherever he has to go, and make sure he pays for the outrage he exacted upon America.

Moderator: Can we move heaven and earth to do it?

Romney: We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch that this is all about one person ”” Osama bin Laden ”” because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another.

This is about Shia and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and Al Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.

They ultimately want to bring down the United States of America.

This is a global effort we’re going to have to lead to overcome this jihadist effort. It’s more than Osama bin Laden.

But he is going to pay, and he will die.

I’m not sure why this particular episode has galled me so much. It isn’t just that Obama engages in this sort of thing—which, after all, is hardly unheard-of in campaigns—but that with so many people his reputation for honesty and uprightness and integrity remains unbesmirched. How does he pull that one off?

Does the allegation that Nancy Pelosi…

The New Neo Posted on by

…lied about and disguised her prior knowledge and approval of waterboarding surprise anyone?

The people who care and who disapprove are almost certainly those who washed their hands of the abominable Pelosi long ago. People who think she’s great probably could not be dissuaded from that position no matter what they found out about her, and certainly not for something like this;

In his new book, “Hard Measures,” [ex-CIA counterterrorism chief] Rodriguez reveals that he led a CIA briefing of Pelosi, where the techniques being used in the interrogation of senior al-Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaida were described in detail. Her claim that she was not told about waterboarding at that briefing, he writes, “is untrue.”

“We explained that as a result of the techniques, Abu Zubaydah was compliant and providing good intelligence. We made crystal clear that authorized techniques, including waterboarding, had by then been used on Zubaydah.” Rodriguez writes that he told Pelosi everything, adding, “We held back nothing.”

How did she respond when presented with this information? Rodriguez writes that neither Pelosi nor anyone else in the briefing objected to the techniques being used. Indeed, he notes, when one member of his team described another technique that had been considered but not authorized or used, “Pelosi piped up immediately and said that in her view, use of that technique (which I will not describe) would have been ”˜wrong.’”‰” She raised no such concern about waterboarding, he writes. “Since she felt free to label one considered-and-rejected technique as wrong,” Rodriguez adds, “we went away with the clear impression that she harbored no such feelings about the ten tactics [including waterboarding] that we told her were in use.”

Humor and presidents and aging and…

The New Neo Posted on by

Now that the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has passed, this might be the best time to state that this stuff is undignified and bothers me whoever does it, Democrat or Republican. I’m all for presidential humor, but it used to be a class act. Whatever JFK did in his private life, his jokes were actually funny, and very very tasteful. Same for FDR.

But I suppose that only marks me even further as the old fuddy-dud I have become.

And speaking of age (we were speaking of age, weren’t we?), John Hawkins has a post on what it’s like to turn forty.

I’ve got a reflection on what it’s like to turn—well, whatever it is I’m about to turn: you don’t remember what it’s like to turn forty.

Although, actually, it’s not too dissimilar from turning forty as Hawkins describes that process:

At 40, you actually start to see the trajectory of your life from the present day, all the way to the grave and you start asking yourself some hard questions. Did I pick the right career? Do I want to stay on the same path from now until I die? Am I ever going to fulfill those childhood dreams? What legacy am I going to leave to the world when I’m gone? Am I missing out on anything?…You start to realize that health is a finite resource. So is opportunity. So is energy. So is time.

Except now it’s getting serious.