I think Richard Thompson is the musician I’ve seen perform live the most times in my life – maybe eight? He always gives 200%.
Roundup
Another busy news day, so here’s another roundup.
(1) Jonathan Turley has even more to say about the Trump indictment by Jack Smith.
(2) In Ecuador, it seems they kill candidates rather than merely attempt to imprison them:
BREAKING: Ecuadorian Presidential Candidate Fernando Villavicencio assassinated at campaign event – Local media
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 10, 2023
(3) The FBI killed a man in Provo, Utah, while trying to serve him with a warrant for threatening Joe Biden and other officials. It’s unclear what the exact circumstances were:
On Wednesday morning, Provo resident Craig Robertson was shot and killed by the FBI after allegedly threatening to kill President Biden. ABC4 spoke with his neighbors to get a closer look at how neighbors and friends perceived him.
Robertson was described by neighbors as an older church-going man. He was reportedly in his late 70s, and barely mobile. According to neighbors, Robertson used a hand-carved walking stick just to get out of a chair and move around.
Nevertheless, he had weapons and had threatened – online, anyway – to use them against various lawyers (Alvin Bragg, for example) as well as Biden. We’ll never know whether this was just bluster or an actual intent to harm. Neighbors describe him as a nice guy, although weird, who took care of his disabled grown son.
[A neighbor] Clark said he believes Robertson may have just let himself get carried away on social media.
“I can’t imagine that he could either physically or mentally act on any of that at all. So I think it’s just a tragedy like this, an abject tragedy that got out of hand,” Clark said.
Around 6:15 a.m., FBI agents attempted to serve an arrest and search warrant at his Provo residence when the raid led to the shooting and killing of Robertson.
Did they do the full SWAT-type approach? Did Robertson fire back at them? I wonder whether we’ll ever learn.
(4) Christopher Wray lied to Congress about the extent of the FBI’s war against “traditional” Catholics.
(5) The Biden administration is unfreezing six billion dollars in Iranian assets in exchange for five Iranian-American prisoners. Moral hazard, anyone? The money will supposedly be administered by Qatar and can only be used for “humanitarian purposes, such as medicine or food.” Why do I doubt it will work out that way?
(6) The Band’s Robbie Robertson has died. RIP. I just now learned from reading his Wiki page that Roberton’s mother was of native American (Cayuga and Mohawk) background, and his biological father (who was not his legal father) was Jewish. Interesting combination.
Maui fires
The left likes to use all forest fires as opportunities to blame climate change.
But here’s the probable cause for the destructive fires in Maui:
But some experts said they suspect human development on the island is at least partly to blame for the destruction.
Wildfires have quadrupled in Hawaii in recent decades, and many scientists say the culprit is unmanaged, nonnative grasslands planted by plantations and ranchers and others unfamiliar with the island’s native ecosystems. The grass is dry and prone to fires.
“There is no doubt that fire-prone grasses have invaded drier Hawaiian ecosystems and brought larger, more intense fires,” said Peter Vitousek, a professor of earth sciences at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
High winds and low humidity likely contributed to the fires, but officials know little else, said Maj. Gen. Kenneth Hara, commander general of the Hawaii Army National Guard, at a briefing Wednesday.
The high winds were from a distant hurricane.
I wrote a number of posts about wildfires in California that also blamed human habitation encroaching more and more on areas of dry, unmanaged vegetation. This seems to be a constant theme for wildfires these days, as well as arson.
Oh, and by the way, in line with my post about truncated DeSantis quotes …
… here’s a comment I just noticed at Instapundit:
Ron deSantis just effectively committed suicide with the Republican base (and independents as well) by endorsing the 2020 election theft.
Which of course Ron DeSantis did not do, as I wrote (with actual quotes) in this post. But the truncated-quote-lie is a very effective tool, as I also wrote, and it’s being used against DeSantis by the Trump forces – and of course by the MSM, which also uses the Trump forces to spread the word although the latter may not recognize that’s what’s happening.
Most people will not get curious enough to look up the context of any quote. Most people will jump on a quote that seems to substantiate what they already thought was the case, rather than check it out. Why do you think that NBC interviewer was so eager to keep asking an asking DeSantis to repudiate the idea that there was fraud in 2020? She was hoping to elicit something to use in a headline that the Trump forces would pick up and spread, something that would hurt DeSantis with the right. And although DeSantis was careful in his answer, the misleading sound bite was generated because – as Karl Popper said – Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.
Although actually, I very much doubt that those accusing DeSantis of rejecting the idea that any election fraud happened in 2020 actually misunderstand what he said, if they in fact read it or heard it. They are purposely misrepresenting it in order to effect a political end. So I will revise that Popper quote to read this way: Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be quoted in a misleading manner in order to harm you: there will always be some who use a truncated quote in order to mislead others for political gain.
Trump refuses to sign pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee
As soon as I heard a while back that participation in the Republican presidential debates for 2024 would require entrants to pledge to support the eventual nominee, I was virtually certain that Trump would not be participating and that he would refuse to sign such a pledge. And so this news is no surprise:
Former President Donald Trump said he would not sign the loyalty pledge that is a requirement for participating in the upcoming first Republican presidential primary debate.
Trump has already met the other criteria, including minimum donor and polling thresholds, to participate in the debate set for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee.
But Trump, the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination, said Wednesday night that he would not sign a candidate pledge agreeing to support the eventual party nominee, no matter who it is.
“I wouldn’t sign the pledge. Why would I sign a pledge if there are people on there that I wouldn’t have?” Trump asked in an interview on Newsmax. …
The former president has repeatedly signaled he plans to skip the debates, contending that there was no point in exposing himself to a barrage of attacks from his rivals who are far behind him in the polls.
Of course he doesn’t want to debate in the first place, even if there wasn’t a pledge requirement. Why should he? He’s way ahead because the are so many completely committed Trump loyalists, or so it would appear from the polls. Why would he enter a series of debates – exercises in which he’s never been especially strong – and allow himself to be measured directly against opponents who may be more articulate in that arena? Why would he want to stand next to people who are a lot younger? No, he much prefers rallies where he can do his patented schtick unopposed, in front of adoring fans. No one ever said Trump didn’t have a well-developed ego.
In addition, he wants to keep his options open for running 3rd-party in case he manages to not get the nomination. That way he can act as a spoiler. I think he’d rather Biden were elected than one of his rivals. If that sounds like a harsh judgment on my part, so be it. I have said many times that I think Trump has changed somewhat since his bout of COVID right before the 2020 election, and since the election itself and of course J6 and then his current prosecutions. I believe his always-present narcissism and anger have grown greater, and his judgment poorer. He never was a conventional Republican, and if for some reason he fails to win the nomination in 2024 he will not hesitate to turn on the party that he will feel has so wronged him, and he will want the party to go down with his own ship and have no problem acting as spoiler.
As I’ve said so many times before when I’m predicting something upsetting, I hope I’m wrong about that. But as it is, I think that Trump loyalists will stick with Trump no matter what, and it will lead to the election of Biden or a Biden-replacement-to-be-named-later.
If this scenario ends up happening that way, I think it will be an unforced error and a tragedy.
I suppose Trump’s refusal to participate in the debates might end up backfiring on him, however. If one or several of the GOP candidates are especially impressive, Trump might lose a significant number of his supporters. I suppose that could end up mattering. But from what I see online, the vast majority of his current most loyal supporters would follow him right over that cliff and help elect Biden or Biden’s replacement.
Open thread 8/10/23
The Biden take is now …
And counting.
A mere bag of shells:
President Biden’s family and their allies brought in at least $20 million from foreign sources, including first son Hunter Biden’s business associates in Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine — some of whom dined with the current commander-in-chief, the House Oversight Committee revealed Wednesday. …
“During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as ‘the brand’ to reap millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine. It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself,” [James] Comer said in a statement.
Those truncated DeSantis quotes
I’ve written before about how early I noticed a smear campaign on the right against DeSantis. I use the words “smear campaign” not to describe mere criticism, but attacks based on distortions of his record and his words. Trump was a very active participant, and many of his supporters followed his lead on blogs and in comments. It spread very rapidly and very effectively.
And of course the left is very happy to encourage it and amplify it. Perhaps some of these comments are made by leftists masquerading as someone on the right, but I believe the majority are actually from people on the right.
I have no problem with criticism of DeSantis, and if voters don’t want him as the nominee then that’s the way it is. But I would like people to understand his actual positions, not distortions of those positions by the opposition.
A recent example is the reaction to DeSantis saying in an interview that Biden won the election, and that he also supposedly said that accusations of fraud in the 2020 election are false. I’ve seen headlines to that effect in many places, on both left and right.
A commenter here named “banned lizard” wrote:
I hoped he would bow out gracefully.
Oh, well.DeSantis: ‘Of course’ Trump lost in 2020
*sigh*
Why anyone would hope DeSantis would “bow out gracefully” I don’t know, unless that person is convinced Trump would win the general and be more effective at swamp-draining than he was during his first term. I think quite otherwise. “Banned lizard” and the rest who would like DeSantis to disappear and leave the field to Trump are entitled to their opinions, of course.
But what I detest – no matter what side does it – is the use of propagandist truncated quotes. I’m quite aware that waging war against that practice is a losing game. The propagandist truncated quote is a very clever tool, used constantly by each side. It’s a way of telling the truth – “So and so said this awful thing!” – while taking the quote out of context in order to lead to a misperception (or at the very least an incomplete, misleading perception) on the part of the listener or reader. I hate it when it’s used against anyone. That very much includes when it’s used against Trump – which happens constantly and to great effect, both from the left and from NeverTrumpers who used to be on the right.
How boring and time-consuming to look up the longer and more complicated story. The press knows this; politicians’ enemies and/or opponents know it, too. Nice guys finish last and all that. Much better to go with the attention-getting, incendiary quote, the one the leads people to the conclusion you want. It works for both Trump’s enemies and for DeSantis’ enemies, on both left and right, and both sides are adept at spinning someone’s words. For Trump-boosters on the right, the theme is DeSantis as betrayer stabbing Trump in the back, as well as DeSantis the wimp, DeSantis the GOPe candidate – despite DeSantis’ record in Florida and in Congress as a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative group in the House.
For this recent DeSantis interview, if you look past the headlines you’ll see that the general points DeSantis was making were the following:
(1) Trump lost in the sense that he is not currently president. Biden is.
(2) The 2020 election had multiple issues that make it especially suspect, and several aspects of the rule changes were unconstitutional.
(3) Trump has some responsibility for this in that he approved of Fauci and the lockdowns that led to many of the rule changes, and he also signed a bill that funded ballot mailings.
(4) Trump’s lack of control over the FBI allowed them to suppress the Hunter Biden story.
(5) Republicans and Trump didn’t fight back hard enough against these things when it was all happening, and they need to do that in the future. (In other words, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.)
I have transcribed the relevant part of the interview that most people are talking about, the video of which can be found here:
Q: So could we just put this to bed, so you don’t have to be asked about this a million times – yes or no, did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?
DeS: Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on January 20th every four years is the winner, and I don’t think the election – and I’ve pointed out in that same quote, and I’ve said this from the very beginning – when they changed the rules for COVID, I think that was wrong. I think some of those changes were unconstitutional. When they do mass mail ballots, I think that’s wrong. When they do ballot harvesting, I think that’s wrong. I think Zuckerbucks was wrong. I think the fact that the FBI was working with Facebook and these other tech companies to censor the Hunter Biden story was wrong. And so I don’t think it was the perfect election; I remember after, the media was saying “This is the most secure election in history.” How could it be the most secure with those millions of mail ballots going out? At the same time, after the election, they were talking about Maduro stealing votes on the voting machines or whatever, and none of those theories proved to be true. But here is the issue that I think is important for Republican voters to think about: why did we have all those mail votes – because Trump turned the government over to Fauci? They embraced lockdowns, they did the CARES Act, which funded mail-in ballots, across the country. Donald Trump signed that bill that funded the mail ballots that all the Republicans have been so concerned about. And also, what the censorship of the Hunter Biden – that was Donald Trump’s FBI that was working that. He didn’t have control over his own government. So with me as the nominee, we won’t let them run circles around us. In Florida we banned ballot harvesting; I think that’s what you should do. If there is ballot harvesting that’s allowed, like in Nevada, we are going to do it too. We’re not going to fight with one hand tied behind our backs. And so I think all of those issues were very problematic, but at the end of the day, Donald Trump helped facilitate that whole set of circumstances.
Q: Okay, but respectfully, you did not clearly answer that question. And if you can’t give a yes or no on whether or not Trump …
DeS: Because …
Q … lost, then how can you …
DeS: Of course he lost …
Q Trump lost the 2020 election …
DeS: Joe Biden’s the president. The issue is I think, what people – in the media and elsewhere – they want to act like somehow this was just the perfect election. So I don’t think it was a good run election, but I also think Republicans didn’t fight back. You’ve got to fight back when that is happening, and you shouldn’t have provided all the money to fund the mail-in ballots.
Will the Biden corruption news matter in the 2024 election?
Answer: very little.
The first question is whether Biden will run in 2024. I am hereby going on record as thinking that he probably will be the Democrats’ nominee. That may be a somewhat unusual point of view on the right, but I continue to believe that the removal of Biden and Kamala Harris would be difficult to pull off, and I think that Joe is so full of himself that he would never go voluntarily. As long as Biden polls decently against Trump, he’ll be allowed to stay in there – unless polls show that a replacement like Newsom would be a shoo-in. I don’t think that’s the case at the moment, although it’s hard to find a Newsom vs. Trump poll.
And what of the cascading news about Biden corruption? I doubt that most potential Biden voters care, for two reasons. The first is that the MSM is barely covering it – and when it does, the story tends to be of the “Republicans pounce” and the “there isn’t a scintilla of evidence that Joe was involved” variety. I think most potential Biden voters will read the headlines, nod, and go on with their lives and their Biden votes.
The second reason is that even if such voters are following the Biden corruption news, they perceive Biden as running against Hitler himself. Whom would you prefer: a slightly corrupt pol – “corrupt” in the old-fashioned way of taking money for favors – or Hitler? It’s a no-brainer, isn’t it?
Open thread 8/9/23
Another police officer in the Chauvin case sentenced
Former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao was sentenced to almost five years in jail on Monday for his role in the death of George Floyd. Thao was at the scene that day doing crowd control and is essentially being charged for not doing anything to stop it.
Tou Thao, the officer who held back bystanders during Floyd’s fatal arrest in May 2020, was handed a 4.75-year sentence, or four years and nine months, on Monday by Hennepin County Judge Peter A. Cahill. It comes over a year after his conviction on Minnesota state charges.
Thao was convicted last year on federal charges and is serving a 42-month prison sentence. Monday’s jail sentence will run concurrently, instead of consecutively, with the federal sentence, so he already received credit for 340 days.
I guess the feds didn’t consider 42 months to be enough of a sentence for the likes of Thao. This was his terrible crime:
Cahill found wrote in his 177-page ruling in May that Thao’s actions separated Chauvin and two other former officers from the crowd, including an emergency medical technician. The judge said this allowed the officers to continue restraining Floyd and prevented bystanders from rendering medical aid.
“There is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Thao’s actions were objectively unreasonable from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, when viewed under the totality of the circumstances,” Cahill wrote.
“Thao’s actions were even more unreasonable in light of the fact that he was under a duty to intervene to stop the other officers’ excessive use of force and was trained to render medical aid,” he added.
So was Thao supposed to let the crowd surge forward and engulf the officers and Floyd? When is a mob not a mob, and how on earth is Thao supposed to know what that group would do if uncontrolled? And while Thao is keeping his eye on all of that, he’s also supposed to know that Floyd has stopped breathing, and he’s supposed to do something about that, too?
I guess Minneapolis police officers are supposed to be Superman. But at this point it may be moot, because Minneapolis has lost so many of its police officers – and it’s not hard to figure out why.
Robert Barnes on the Jack Smith indictment of Trump
I’ve said before that I think Robert Barnes is very good on legal issues pertaining to politics in the US, although there are other topics on which I’m in disagreement with him. But he’s up to his usual high standards on the subject of Jack Smith’s Trump indictment and the ways in which Barnes thinks it should be fought by Trump’s lawyers.
The problem is, of course, that in the particular DC court in which it’s being tried, legal issues that might go in Trump’s favor will be only small obstacles to be gotten around one way or the other. It’s on appeal – and I mean appeal all the way to SCOTUS – that Trump might prevail.
The left knows that, and is proceeding anyway for propaganda and revenge purposes. Both of those goals are important to the left. The revenge element is obvious: make him suffer and make his supporters suffer as well. The propaganda is with the idea of elevating him in supporters’ eyes so that he wins the primary, and yet making him ever more toxic in the eyes of those in the middle so that they will not vote for him in the general. This is playing with fire – but then again, the whole thing is playing with fire in the sense that it escalates the divisions in America and causes ever more bitterness and anger.
The left may feel so secure right now because they assume they can put down any rebellions or protests and “J6” the protesters by using Draconian measures to either shoot them a la Ashli Babbitt or incarcerate them a la the J6 defendants. They also may feel secure about the 2024 election because they either can cheat and no Republican will have the courage to call them on it because of fear of the legal repercussions (now that such accusations by the right have become supposed crimes), or that the left will win the election even without cheating and with just the usual “rigging.”
But what if a lot – and I mean a lot – of people in the middle are turned off by the left’s show trial of Trump and recognize it for what it is, and vote for him or Republicans in general as a result? What are the chances of that happening? I don’t know, but I don’t think the chances are zero. It would be “interesting” to see how the left would handle that.
So, here’s Barnes:
By the way, Trump’s lawyers are trying to get the Jack Smith case moved out of DC. But of course the judge who will decide if the request to move the case has any merit is the very same judge who is already hopelessly biased against Trump
:
Trump’s arguments center on two claims: that Washington D.C.’s liberal politics would deprive him of an impartial jury, and that the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol stirs an emotional response in Washington, D.C. residents that is unique to the region. His lawyer, John Lauro, said Sunday he intends to survey D.C. residents to back up these claims and present findings to the judge.
Trump’s biggest obstacle: Chutkan — along with nearly every federal judge on the bench in Washington, D.C. — has already rejected versions of these arguments in the hundreds of criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6 attack. A review of Chutkan’s rulings on these motions suggests Trump is unlikely to fare any better.
At the heart of Chutkan’s analysis — like most of her colleagues’ as well — is a rejection of Trump’s premise. Just because a juror is affiliated with one political party — and even opposes the political views of someone facing charges — does not mean they are incapable of setting aside those views to judge a case based on evidence and facts.
No, it doesn’t mean it for sure – but it means it’s highly likely that the person is incapable of it if that person hates the defendant. And in a venue such as DC, the likelihood is that everyone on the jury will meet that description. But hey, let’s pretend otherwise, because that’s part of the plan.